


Charlie and Dennis Hide a Body

by hyperbolaris (keuppia)



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Canon-Typical Gang Behavior, Comedy, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Murder, Recreational Drug Use, as you read the tags i want you to remember that this is a comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2020-12-04 00:22:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20913680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keuppia/pseuds/hyperbolaris
Summary: Dennis always thought he might kill someone one day. But he didn't expect it to be an accident. Maybe he's not a criminal mastermind, after all. He can't deal with this on his own; he needs help. Charlie's willing to give it.Committing felonies together really brings Dennis and Charlie's relationship to the next level. Could it be love? Whatever it is, it's sure freaking out the rest of the gang.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set between seasons 11 and 12, because that's when I first had the story idea. So it's 2016, and Dennis, Mac, and Dee all live in Dee's apartment.

Dennis gives the body one last kick, but it's been over for a while now. There's blood everywhere: shining on the dark wood of the bar and pooling on the floor. It's on his hands, his face; seeping into his pant cuffs. All over the man who had, moments ago, made him so angry he thought his head would split from the pressure. But now he's nothing. Meat.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. Dennis had thought about it—a thousand times, he'd thought about it. Every fucking time he'd see a murder on TV or in a movie, he'd critique it, imagine how he could and would do so much better; in the same way Mac would talk about the fight scenes. Looks like neither one of them could measure up.

He knew the safest way to do it would be to kill a vulnerable stranger, Jack the Ripper style. Someone who could never be traced back to him. For the biggest thrill, he would have killed someone close to him. But the guy Dennis actually _had_ killed was somewhere in the middle: some degenerate alcoholic who'd frequented Paddy's for years, but whose name Dennis didn't even know. And the guy is dead inside the bar. His bar! That definitely wasn't part of the murder plan.

Oh god. He has no clue how to do this.

Walk away, say his instincts. Sleep on it. Forget about it.

That's what he's always done, for every failed plan in that mile-long rope of failed plans, the one that is now wrapping itself around his throat and starting to squeeze—no. He can't just walk away from a murder.

He needs help.

Dennis pulls out his phone. The wet blood on his hands beads against the touch screen, making it difficult to unlock. Without thinking, he wipes the screen off on his shirt and leaves a bright stain across his stomach. His contact list is thick with the names of women he slept with years, even decades ago—but there are only three names of any consequence.

Dee is the first person he considers. She's his constant, his twin; a relic from another time, a tie to his childhood emotions. In his own way, he really does love Dee.

He doesn't trust Dee. If they'd killed the man together, she'd be a great asset to Dennis. But she's not complicit in this. She has no reason not to betray Dennis, and she'd surely rat him out at the first opportunity, that bitch.

Now Mac, he could trust. Mac would do whatever he asked and never betray him. He'd be glad to have some shared secret, a thing to bring him closer to Dennis. The only problem with Mac is, he's such a goddamn incompetent idiot that even with his good intentions, he'd only get in Dennis' way, and probably get him caught. Mac could never pull this off; Dennis can't believe he ever thought otherwise.

And because there's no way in hell he's calling Frank, that leaves Charlie. Unpredictable, uncontrollable Charlie. On the surface, he's a terrible choice—but who else does Dennis have? Besides, there are benefits to this plan. Charlie, who hangs out under bridges and in sewers, knows the seedy underbelly of Philly like no one else. He's seen all the dark corners, all the dirty, forgotten people. Sure, he doesn't have much for brains, but Dennis knows that as soon as he comes up with his own plan, Charlie will be the perfect grunt to carry it out. And he's certain the plan is forming in his mind. It will come to him. It will all come.

Dennis presses call. The echoing ring on the other end is the only sound in the darkened bar. It rings again. What's taking so long? Goddamn it, Charlie—pick up already.

He hears a click as the call connects. Charlie tries to start in with some sort of greeting, but Dennis is faster, words pouring out of his mouth, “Hey Charlie, buddy, Char-lie! You gotta come down to the bar really quick, okay? I need you at the bar. Come to the bar.”

There's a pause. Dennis can hear Frank's unconscious grunting through the phone.

“Dennis, what the fuck? It's three AM.”

“Yeah, that's the time, thanks for telling me the time, like I didn't already know the f—” he takes a deep breath. “Uh, my bad, but I really need your help down here at the bar,” he grimaces, glad Charlie can't see him through the phone, and spits out, “You're the only one who can help me.”

The worst part is, he's not even flattering Charlie: it's just the truth. And it _still_ doesn't work.

“Look, if someone threw up or whatever, I'll clean it up in the morning, all right? You don't need to disturb me in my house, in my bed, when I'm trying to sleep, dude!”

“It's not vomit,” Dennis says, looking again at the body beside his feet.

“What is it, then? Shit? Rats? Piles of rat shit?”

“Can—”

“Maybe rats made out of shit? Coming to life, crawling out of the toilets, sneaking into the bar and like, getting shit everywhere—”

“Can you just fucking come down here? It's important,” he grits his teeth again and forces himself to say, “Please, Charlie.”

The desperation must be enough to mask his contempt this time, because Charlie sighs loudly and relents. “All right, fine. But this better not be bullshit.”

Dennis hangs up the phone. Charlie's on his way—it's all good. Dennis is cool. He's going to be fine. But god, if Charlie fucks around and takes too long to get to the bar, Dennis is going to kill him.

His eyes flit downwards instinctively. Well, no, he wouldn't kill Charlie like _that_. Probably. Dennis' hands shake slightly as he reaches down to the body. He ghosts over the carnage, landing on a protruding bit of skin below the man's crushed eye socket. It isn't very nice skin, all greasy and uneven, but it still makes Dennis' breath hitch.

Maybe he should stash the body somewhere else; it's in sight of the bar's front door, and Dennis figures Charlie is going to scream as soon as he sees it. God, he's already regretting calling Charlie. The kid's going to be completely useless. Dennis wants to call him back, tell him not to come—and Dennis would, but he's really struggling to come up with an alternative plan. The bar's freezer isn't big enough to fit a man. In his fantasies, Dennis always has a secluded cabin somewhere, with industrial appliances and soundproof walls.

He has to do something, anyway. Dennis gets behind the corpse, yanks it up by its armpits, and looks around.

After he's dealt with the body, but before he can fully decide how he's going to break things to Charlie, Dennis hears the scratch of keys at the door. For one horrible second, he thinks it might be one of the others, coming back at the worst possible time, like they always do. But no, it's Charlie. He can tell by how many times the key gets turned around in the lock. Even after more than a decade, Charlie still tries the wrong keys.

Dennis just hopes he hid the body well enough that he can explain things a little before Charlie's inevitable freak out.

“All right, goddamn it, what's the problem?” Charlie yells through the finally-open door. He stops short as Dennis runs into him, blocking his way.

“Charlie,” Dennis says warmly. He puts one arm around Charlie's shoulders and another against his chest as he draws Charlie off to the less-bloody side of the bar. “Say, you're great at cleaning things up, right? The best.”

Charlie shrugs and shifts his eyes.

“Goddamn right you are. That's why it's called Charlie work. Now look, there's a little bit of a mess in the bar, no big deal, but I kind of—”

“So who'd you kill?

“Kill? Why'd you say—kill?” Dennis forces a laugh, high and fragile.

“'Cause you're drenched in blood, and there's a dead body covered in towels on the other side of the bar,” says Charlie, as he maneuvers past a disoriented Dennis. “Those were good towels, too, dude. I don't know what you were covering him up for, but you coulda at least used the rags.”

On the other side of the bar, Charlie kneels down and draws back the blood-soaked towels from what was, even Dennis has to admit now, his pretty pathetic attempt to conceal the body. The corpse underneath is a sickening mess of blood and brains, with its skull caved in.

“Well, I guess we don't have to worry about anyone identifying the body,” Charlie says. His tone is light and amused—not at all the horrified panic Dennis was expecting. Somehow, it both pisses him off and calms him down.

“Like you'd understand the intricacies of a good murder,” he says, his voice still small.

“You didn't answer me before: who is this guy?”

“I don't know. But I think he's been to the bar a few times.”

Charlie claws into the dead guy's stained jeans pocket and brings out a phone and a velcro wallet. He opens the latter and nabs a few bills before bringing out a driver's license. “Oh shit, you killed Radoslaw Niemczyk?”

“If that's the guy's name and not just some sounds you're making, then yeah, probably.”

“Shit, dude. Radoslaw's a great customer. And he used to be an exterminator; really helped me keep the rats down in here.” Charlie is looking at Dennis reproachfully.

“If he's your fucking best friend, why didn't you recognize him?”

“Well, I never saw him without his face before!”

“Oh, I'm Charlie,” says Dennis in a high, mocking tone. “I'm too good to look at a crushed skull, even though I roll around in human shit all day!”

“I'm just saying, there are a lot of other customers you could have killed. Maybe next time you can check with me, and I'll tell you the ones I don't like.”

“I wasn't—”

“Although I gotta say, good on you for actually committing to it,” Charlie says as he wipes off his hands and rises. He walks past Dennis and over to the bathroom, but keeps talking. His voice is muffled, echoing off the tiles. “I didn't think you actually had it in you.”

“What do you mean?” asks Dennis. He's not sure whether he should be offended that Charlie never thought of him as a murderer.

“Oh, you know. Mac thinks he's badass and Dee thinks she's an actress, and you think you're Ted Bundy or something, but it's all bullshit,” Charlie returns with a few garbage bags and a bunch of cleaning supplies, whose existence would be a surprise to anyone who's ever been inside Paddy's. “But hey, you got one step closer to the dream tonight. That's like, self-actualization. Good work, dude.”

“Ted Bundy wishes he was me."

“Probably, because he's in prison and dead, and you've got me to keep that from happening,” Charlie says, with a little finger-gun gesture that really sells his credibility. He dumps the supplies on the floor, and in an instant, his shirt follows. Then, he grabs the zipper of his pants.

Dennis interrupts, “What are you doing?”

“Uh, I don't want blood all over me, Dennis,” he says, holding his arms out like he can't believe the stupidity of the question.

“Yeah, okay,” says Dennis grudgingly. “Leave your underwear on, though.”

Charlie groans. “Suddenly seeing my dick is the worst thing in the world. Don't you and Mac jerk off together?”

“No, that's—I just don't think you should be naked around the body.”

“Radoslaw doesn't give a shit; he's dead!”

“I know he's dead, he's my kill! I watched the life drain from his eyes. If anyone's going to be naked around his dead body, it should be me.”

“Then you can get naked, too. In fact, I encourage it, because things are only gonna get bloodier from here.”

“Oh, goddamn it! Keep your underwear on,” Dennis says. His clothes are already ruined, but he removes his shirt while Charlie lays down a blanket of trash bags. Dennis watches as Charlie bends over, in his briefs that look like they're over Pennsylvania's age of consent: riddled with holes and faded to a patchy gray-brown.

Charlie makes an exasperated huff and sidles past as Dennis starts unlacing his shoes. He grabs the dead guy's phone off the ground and throws it into the bar's seldom-used cocktail blender. Like its owner, it fights death—as the blades whir to action, it jerks and twists before its frame finally pops apart, and it dissolves into black dust.

Dennis wets his mouth. “That doesn't seem food-safe.”

Charlie raises his eyebrows as if to say, No shit.

Abruptly, Charlie drops the blender and rounds on the body again. “Okay, you grab the shoulders, I'll get the feet. Let's move him into the bathroom.”

The corpse is heavier than it looks, now that he's actually having to lift it, not just drag it around the bar. The liquid oozing from the man's crushed skull also makes it tough to get a firm grip. Dennis' hands keep slipping; he wishes he'd killed someone skinnier, but it's not too far to the men's room. They dump the body next to the floor drain while the sickly lights flicker overhead. Charlie has left a few gallons of bleach around the floor, along with a hacksaw and some uselessly small knives from behind the bar.

Chopping up bodies definitely counts as Charlie work. Dennis exhales through his nose. “Is this really necessary?”

"Look, I know a guy who can handle this sort of thing. He's a fisherman. Dumps little pieces of people out, lets the fish go nuts. But he only accepts body parts that are already bite-sized."

"I meant, is it necessary for _me_ to do it."

Charlie responds by rolling his eyes with painful-looking vehemence. “You can dice the guy up, or you can clean the rest of the bar. Take your pick.”

Dennis immediately drops his bare knees onto the sticky bathroom tiles. He grabs one of the paring knives and looks at it for a moment, then glances up over the sink and catches his own reflection. His sickly-pale skin doesn't look so pale now, side-by-side with a bloodless corpse. He smooths his ruffled hair down with one hand, then brings the knife across the body, cutting away the dead man's bloody shirt to reveal a flabby and pathetically middle-aged torso. The normalcy of it is almost shocking after looking for so long at the guy's shattered cranium.

Charlie hums an acknowledgment and leaves while Dennis reaches for the saw. Its blade is thin and flexible as a zip tie. It looks delicate, but when Dennis presses it to the shoulder joint, it cuts through with surprising ease.

Still, the work is tedious. It's exactly the sort of mindless manual labor he's always been too good for. Dennis listens to the squelching noise the saw makes on soft tissue and starts to zone out, like he's having a guided meditation. When he repositions the newly-severed arm, Dennis notices how the flickering bathroom lights catch on the dead hand. It's full of minuscule shards of glass, countless numbers of them, lighting up the skin like glitter.

Dennis remembers the dead man smashing his half-full beer bottle against the bar, shouting curses. It had been a bad night; Frank blustering excuses as to why he shouldn't have to work, Dee still angry with Dennis over something he'd forgotten, Mac screaming at the customers when they complained of being mugged outside Paddy's. Charlie had left early with Frank, and Mac and Dee had followed at their own pace, not even wasting their time to explain why. Dennis was left alone to clear out the bar.

Usually, it was sort of fun to throw out the blind drunks after last call, but because this evening was an absolute nightmare, one of the drunks refused to listen. Instead of heading for the door like everyone else had, this guy smashed his bottle and screamed and pissed all over the floor, and Dennis had started to think about how, since Charlie was gone, he was the one who was going to have to clean that shit up. He remembers staring at the little pieces of glass covering the bar and floor, and after that, he thinks the guy must have said something insulting, because he remembers getting absolutely furious. He remembers, but in a distorted, underwater way, remembers wrapping his hands around the man's throat and squeezing it like a stress ball. He remembers picking up the broken bottle with one hand and jamming it into the guy's fat neck. And as the choking, gasping man fell, Dennis remembers kicking him—first all over his body, but then just his head—and kicking and kicking until the stupid look fell off his face, along with his nose and lips.

“Dennis? Hey, Dennis?”

“Yeah?” Dennis realizes he's finished. The body in front of him is completely sliced into small, jagged jigsaw pieces. His hands are sore, he's suddenly aware. He drops the saw and looks up at Charlie, who's standing in front of him with an armload of bloody rags.

“You okay, dude?”

“I,” Dennis almost brushes the question off, but he's just so tired. “I don't know.”

Charlie offers his hand and Dennis accepts it, pulling himself to his feet quickly. Too quickly. His ears buzz and he thinks he's about to fall over, so he grabs hold of Charlie's bare waist to steady himself. Charlie has no reaction to this, and the steady meter of his breathing soothes Dennis. He tries to alter his own to match.

After a moment, Charlie turns his gaze downward and says, “Well, the body looks good. I think we're ready.”

“What are we gonna do now?”

“We gotta get to my guy,” says Charlie, as he finally moves out of Dennis' embrace. He shakes out one of his garbage bags and unceremoniously shoves the load of chopped Radoslaw inside. “Help me carry this out to your car.”

“Wait, we're taking my car? Won't that leave trace evidence and shit? Incriminate me?” Dennis has calmed down enough to start getting angry again.

“What else are we gonna do? Call a cab and have some Pakistani guy drive you from your crime scene to your dump site?”

Dennis frowns. “Why do you assume the driver's Pakistani?”

“I don't care if he's from Mars, there's no way he's going to let you load a dead guy into his trunk!”

Running a hand over the back of his neck, Dennis says, “I just don't want to introduce a racist element into this. It's bad enough that I killed a foreigner.”

“Radoslaw wasn't foreign, he was Polish-American—now who's being racist.”

“No, no, we're the same race, it's not racist. You're still the racist one.”

“Fine, and you're just an off-brand asshole,” says Charlie. “Can we get this guy to the car?”

Dennis considers for a few more seconds and then grimaces. “All right, whatever. Double bag that shit, though. I don't want any blood on my interior.”

As they heave the bag out the door, Dennis glances back at the bar and sees that it's been completely reset. It isn't clean, per se—Paddy's has never been clean—but it is back to normal. A completely average dive bar. The only thing out of place here is him.

They throw the body bag in the back of the Range Rover, along with the blood-soiled rags. Then they head back inside and scrub themselves clean at the bar sink. It's just like any number of other early mornings; it's their usual routine when any one of them gets kicked to the curb by a fed-up one night stand. But this time, the drain isn't clogging with sweat and semen: the red-brown stains on their skin come off pink in the water, and then the water goes clear. When he's clean, Charlie starts putting his clothes back on and throws Dennis a spare set.

“You keep clothes in here?” Dennis asks once he's examined the printed tee in his hands. The front is covered with the NASCAR logo—which is about as low-class as it gets—and it's obviously not going to fit him. “You really gotta stop sleeping in the bar, man. It's not healthy.”

“Hmm? Oh, I mostly keep clothes here so I change after I get covered in rat blood,” Charlie thinks for a second. “But actually, the back office is a pretty nice place to sleep. Nicer than a bed with three other people, anyway.”

Dennis huffs and, seeing that they're both fully clothed, moves towards the door. “Let's just get going and get this over with.”

“Okay. I know the way—give me the keys.”

“No way are you driving my car.”

“What? I help you get rid of a _fucking body_,” he mouths the last part rather than saying it, “And you won't even let me drive your car?”

“Charlie, you don't know how to drive!” says Dennis smugly, as he opens the driver's side.

With a small whine of annoyance, Charlie gets in the passenger's side and slams the door. Dennis clicks his seat belt over his exposed midriff. God, these clothes are ridiculous. At least it's dark out, so no one they pass will be able to see him.

They get moving. Charlie fucks with the radio, changing stations back and forth while he tells Dennis when to turn.

One time, Dennis takes a corner too sharply and the bag in back slides around. Charlie turns his head to look at it, considering for a moment.

“We're hanging Radoslaw's picture in the bar,” he decides.

“Jesus, Charlie, how fucking moronic are you? Why don't we just build a shrine out of his bones and cover it with pictures of him, and keep his head in the freezer, and treat his skin with salt and washing soda so we can keep it soft enough to be workable, and send coded letters to the police,” he takes a deep breath, “If you want to get caught so badly.”

“I'm not gonna hang it up right away, but it's getting hung up.”

The route is long and time consuming, even without traffic. Charlie directs the car down curvy side streets and one-ways until Dennis loses all sense of direction. He's starting to think Charlie doesn't really know where he's going and is just calling out turns at random when suddenly, they pull up to a dilapidated marina. When did they get to the coast?

Charlie jiggles the door handle impatiently as Dennis parks, and he leaps out of the car as soon as the lock opens, running off. Dennis steps out too, but stays next to the car, with the engine still running. The headlights are the only light source around: there's no moon overhead in the cloudy sky. The pristine car windows reflect his face, but make his eyes into dark pits.

It's not more than a minute before Charlie returns and throws open the back car door. “All right, we gotta be quick.”

“What's going on?”

“Well, I told the guy why I came, and he said he'd take the bag, but then I mentioned I came here with you, and he didn't like that so much. So now he's prepping his boat to leave, and if we don't get this out to him before he does—”

“Fuck. Come on, lift the thing then!”

“I am lifting! Maybe you should lift!”

“You're the one who shoved the whole body—I mean, the whole thing into one bag, you stupid dumbass!”

They barely make down the dock before the boat pulls away. Charlie's contact—a grizzled old man who reminds Dennis a little of Rickety Cricket—grudgingly accepts their cargo. He looks them over with piercing, milky-blue eyes, which makes Dennis shift a little and wish he'd disguised himself. He doesn't feel like much of a criminal in his tiny shirt and high-water pants.

He must seem shaken up, because on the way back to the car, Charlie pats him on the back and says, “Don't worry, bro: no body, no case. And if you do get caught, I'll represent you—no charge.”

“For the last time, Charlie, you're not a lawyer.”

“I'm a great lawyer! I could get you off for murder. I got Mac off!”

“No, you didn't, because Mac didn't go to trail, because Mac didn't really kill anyone! You were just stupid enough to think he did. My situation is completely different.”

“There didn't even need to be a trial, that's how good I am,” Charlie cuffs Dennis on the shoulder. “Admit it, dude: I got Mac off faster and harder than anyone's ever gotten off in their life.”

Dennis rolls down his window and puts the car in reverse. He hopes Charlie has the way back memorized, because he sure doesn't know it. But everything seems okay. He drives, and as he watches the coastal road turn back into a city one, the night replays in his head. God, this whole thing is so strange.

“So that's... it?” he asks Charlie, breaking the silence after a few miles.

“Maybe,” Charlie shrugs. “You didn't take any creepy murder-trophies, did you?”

“Ah shit, you're right! I completely forgot to do that,” Dennis says, with mock disappointment. Charlie snorts, and he continues, “Whatever. The guy's stuff was shit anyway.”

The radio is crackling as they move in and out of range—making ghostly, distorted sounds—so Dennis switches it off. The silence in the car isn't uncomfortable, but Dennis is too wired to stay quiet for long.

“We've got a good thing going here, and I don't want to fuck it up,” he says, glancing his eyes between Charlie and the empty road, “But why do you know so much about getting rid of bodies?”

Charlie plays with his seat belt, pulling too much out and then letting it contract. He mumbles, “Frank introduced me to the guy.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured. But why did Frank have to do something like that?”

“Sometimes, I just get so, so angry,” says Charlie, after a moment. His hands are twisted in his shirt and he's staring out the window, even though it's still pitch dark outside.

Clearly, he doesn't want to talk. Dennis decides to let it go; they're both exhausted. He drives a few more miles in silence before feeling like he has to say, “Sometimes I get so angry, I feel like I'm not even there.”

Charlie's head doesn't turn, but he reaches one hand out and clasps it over Dennis' shoulder. The hand moves up and down, up and down, as Dennis watches the headlights on the road.

By the time they get to Charlie's apartment, the sky is yellow-gray with predawn light. They don't say anything else, but Charlie gives Dennis a friendly wave from the front steps of his building. Dennis drives back home and goes straight for the shower. He throws the NASCAR shirt in the trash; if Charlie wants, Dennis can buy him a new one. The guy really does need new clothes. Dennis turns the water temperature all the way on hot and lets it beat into his skin. Dee and Mac are in the next room, but they both _can_ and _have_ slept through fire alarms. And even if he does wake them, whatever. It's not like he's never come home late before. After a night on the town, with a supple young conquest—

Dennis slides one hand downward and tries to work off some of the day's tension. Yeah, he thinks, some half-drunk bar girl with a great ass and the type of huge, perky tits that could only be made of silicon. He imagines laying her down, holding her arms. She says, Choke me. He grabs her soft neck. Squeezes it. Jabs it with the broken bottle. Lets the pulsing arterial blood hit him in the face, pour over him in jets. The girl wipes the blood away from his eyes—no, it's not the girl. It's Charlie. Charlie strokes his fingertips along Dennis' cheekbone, letting his hands pick up the blood. He leans in, and his beard is rough against Dennis' face.

Charlie says into his ear, “I'll get you off.”

Then Dennis sees white. When he opens his eyes again, he thinks, well, that was... new.


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning, Dennis sits with a cup of coffee and watches the early sun filter through Dee's kitchen windows. He's the first one up. Maybe _up_ isn't the right word, because he barely slept and the only thing keeping him in his chair is coffee fumes—but at least the jitters he felt last night have subsided into a sluggish twitchiness.

He's trying to enjoy the morning silence, to compose himself for the day—but it's all ruined when hears a crash and a chorus of swearing from the other room. A few minutes later, Dee tromps in. She glances at Dennis but doesn't acknowledge him in any other way. Instead, she starts digging around in one of her cupboards, pulling out pots and clanging them together. It's possible that all the crashing is just a simple mishap, brought on by Dee's uncoordinated Gumby arms—but Dennis is certain it's a deliberate attempt to ruin his morning and make his head split open. He's still in the midst of figuring out what she's even _trying_ to cook when Mac stumbles in, his hair askew and eyes blurry. He grabs a box of sugary cereal.

“You were out late last night,” says Mac, as he sits down with a bowl. He sounds hurt; he was worried. But what the fuck does he have to be worried about? He's not the one with splinters of bone driven under his fingernails.

“I got laid,” is the obvious lie, of course—but saying it reminds him of his fantasy last night, with the dead girl and Charlie. Charlie was in his dreams, too; thinking his name brings up hazy, almost-there images, like the thoughts are connected by fishing line.

“Was she hot?”

“She was okay,” Dennis takes a sip of coffee. “No Katherine Lager.”

Mac laughs, recalling an old favorite from Dennis' sex tape collection. It was one they'd both seen many times, separately and together. “Goddamn. They can't all look like that.”

“If only they could.”

“How did her back even support those tits?”

He grins at Mac, mostly because he's glad he's no longer being pestered for information. Dennis leans back in his chair, feeling pretty good about his alibi—until he glances over at Dee. She's staring at him with her eyes narrowed and her lip slightly curled. All right; he had known the sex tape story wouldn't distract her, but why is she so suspicious? She has no reason. That bitch. She doesn't know anything. How could she know?

Mac, still in a good mood, follows Dennis' line of sight. Little perplexed lines dot his forehead as he notices the stare-down between the twins. He must want the attention back for himself, so he coughs out, “A hot girl with huge breasts and a strong back—the exact opposite of Dee!”

Dennis laughs at this, hard and shrill, until Dee turns around to mutter insults at the two of them.

“Whatever, dickholes,” she slams her cupboards shut. “Dennis, are you heading to the bar soon?”

God yes, the bar. He has to see the bar again; he absolutely needs to get back to the bar. “I guess I might.”

“Great, you can drop me off. I forgot my bra in the office.”

“Eww, why were you taking off your underwear in there?” asks Mac.

“So I could fuck your boyfriend.”

“But why wouldn't you do that at home, or in a car, or at the movies, like a normal person?” Mac pauses. “I mean, I don't have a—”

“Fine, I'll take you. Let's go,” Dennis cuts in, before Mac can start ranting.

Dee watches her phone screen as they take the elevator down. Even when she's looking at some stupid celebrity news, her eyes are piercing. The thought of having those eyes inside the car he just used to dump a body is making his stomach feel tingly—but not exactly in a bad way. There's a moment when she gets into the passenger seat and almost turns around, almost looks back where the bag was—and Dennis is sure she's going to know, the way a raptor knows where its prey is hiding when it spots a single drop of blood from the air—but instead, she just buckles her seat belt. Dennis takes a deep breath. He drives.

Philadelphia's god-awful rush hour traffic makes Dennis nostalgic for last night's creepy marina roads. He does his best to weave around slow cars, but eventually, they entrap him at a red light. As he waits for it to turn, his eyes lock with his reflection in the side mirror. His hair is limp, and his skin is like paper: pale, dry, thin, and—wrinkled? God, he wishes he could deny it, but these day, it takes an hour and a dozen products just to hide his dark circles; never mind those thin creases of wear, the gray hairs, the pain in his knees, the softness of his waist—

The light must have changed, because suddenly, someone behind him is laying on their horn. Dennis snaps out of his reverie and whitens his knuckles against the steering wheel. Who the fuck thinks they can get away with honking at him?

I've killed a man for less, he thinks. I should respond to this impertinent driver the same way, he thinks—but Dee is way ahead of him. She has her rolled down and is screaming obscenities. Dennis' foot finds the gas and pushes down hard.

\---

The bar is unlocked, even though it's long before they're scheduled to open and much longer before they normally would. Dennis presses his key limply into the lock before he finally thinks to try the handle. The pub looks normal, but the unlocked door has Dennis on edge. He turns the key around and presses its teeth hard into his palm.

Dee makes an exasperated sound and shoves him out of the doorway. As he watches her walk away, Dennis' eyes are drawn to _that_ spot. Even though it's completely bloodless and indistinguishable now, he still feels woozy. He closes the door and leans back against it. It's probably just the lack of sleep.

Within a minute, Dee returns, shoving something black and lacy into her purse.

“Did you really come all the way here for a bra?” Dennis sneers, feeling bold now, because she's standing a foot from where a man died and she doesn't even know. “Why do you even wear bras? Face it, Dee: you're a washboard.”

“Oh yeah? You didn't seem so offended by my bras when I saw you trying them on before ninth grade homecoming.”

Dennis' jaw clicks shut. “I told you, that was just research.”

“Yeah, yeah, research. Well why don't you research some more, you nosy bitch,” says Dee, as she pulls the bra back out of her bag and throws it into Dennis' chest.

He catches it; it's very soft, and honestly a nice design, but— “Dee, this smells horrible. Is that cheese? My god.”

Dee snaps it back out of his hands, her eyes a little wild. “Yeah? Well _you_ smell like chlorine, and you look like shit. Like you're about to pass out. Where did you go last night?”

“I got laid,” says Dennis weakly.

Ignoring him, Dee presses, “It's not crack, is it? Because if you got more crack, you have to tell me.”

“It's not crack.”

“No,” Dee muses. “No, I'd smell it if it was crack. So what was it, then?”

Dennis isn't sure he can think of another lie—but fortunately, he doesn't have to. A second after Dee's question, they hear a high-pitched squeal from the bathroom that makes them both jump. Following closely behind the sound is Charlie, carrying a dead rat twice the size of his head. Dennis isn't sure whether the scream came from the man or the animal.

“Oh hey, you're here early,” Charlie says. He gestures at them in a way that's probably meant to be friendly, but is pretty stomach-turning, given the dead rat in his hand. “Got your bra, huh, Dee?”

“Why don't you and that rat go fuck off into the gutter, you dumb dickass?” Dee yells. Then she storms out of the bar, slamming the door behind her.

Charlie turns towards Dennis and raises his eyebrows. “Well, she's in a mood."

“Yeah,” says Dennis, whose head is starting to pound from all the loud noises. He leans against the door and rubs his temples, grimacing. “She was right about the rat, though.”

Charlie holds the creature up at eye level, which is really not something Dennis needs to see. “Pretty good-sized one, huh? Though I guess it's not going to impress _you_, after last night.”

Dennis twists to look out the window. He's half-convinced he'll see Dee out there, pressing against the other side of the door to spy on them; her smile turning sinister as she hears the damning evidence. But she's long gone and—oh shit, he left his keys in the car. The street is empty of both people and vehicles: clear and calm as an unused coffin. Inside Paddy's, on the other hand, the air is rancid. The antiseptic smell from last night's clean-up is completely gone from the bar, and clings only to him. Dee wasn't wrong about that. Wasn't wrong about anything.

“Shut the fuck up,” Dennis snaps, even knowing there's no one around to hear. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“You didn't really think we were done before, did you? Damn, dude,” Charlie shakes his head. He picks up a folded trash bag and opens it the same way he did last night: thrashing air into it and then shoving in the corpse. “I figured you wouldn't be much help; that's why I didn't call you. But we got the bathroom way too clean last night—total rookie move. I came in to fix things up.”

“_You._ Figured _I_ wouldn't help?” Dennis asks through clenched teeth. “This is _my_ murder.”

Charlie faces him again, venomous, “Oh, so you want to be in charge now? After contributing what, exactly, this morning? Huh? Because I seem to remember you calling me, crying like a little boy, and then doing whatever I told you to do. Without me, you were completely fucking lost. No, I'm serious! The only contribution you made was bashing the shit out of Radoslaw, and uh, I think I coulda handled that, too.”

He shakes the trash bag in Dennis' face, emphasizing. Dennis slaps his hand onto Charlie's outstretched wrist and squeezes hard, his teeth bared. Charlie's mouth hangs a little open, too, and Dennis can just make out the glint of his tongue as it moves along his teeth. He's entranced.

“So,” Dennis tries to start over, but his voice cracks a little. He clears his throat and lets his fingers loosen, but doesn't completely let go of Charlie. He likes the feel of the pulse in Charlie's wrist: quick and heady. “So, you think the cops are gonna come to the bar?”

“Hard to say,” says Charlie, calm now that Dennis is calm. Without the rest of the gang around to fan the flames, their arguments don't build up real heat. “From what I remember, Radoslaw was divorced, and his ex-wife has custody of his kids. He doesn't have a lot of people who'd come looking for him.”

“Who in Paddy's does?” Dennis murmurs.

“Good point. If you disappeared, I know I wouldn't call the cops.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Hey, Ay Cee Ay Bee, man. Besides, that's good news, right? We're probably in the clear already.”

“Yeah,” says Dennis. That _is_ good news, isn't it? It's all over, like it should be. He doesn't need the cops sniffing around; it's not like he wants to go to prison. But is this really all there is? Was _this_ the thing he'd been hyping up in his mind all those years—since before Barbara had let him watch slasher movies?

“Well,” Charlie says, hemming a bit. “We should still get our story straight. Just in case somebody does ask.”

Dennis smiles. “Yeah. We won't need it, but still.”

\---

It's warm and bright in Philadelphia. Dennis goes to bed and wakes up to find the sun in the same position: a golden halo on the days that never end. He spends all his time at the bar, and gets drunk and fights, but never with Charlie. Their eyes always meet as they tear into Dee, then Mac or Frank in turns. They're as close as two rifles in a firing squad, barrel to barrel in a wall of rising smoke. Fresh off the kill.

Not a literal kill, though. They might be a little more bloodthirsty with the gang, but that's only because they don't speak about the bloodstains Dennis keeps thinking he sees out of the corners of his eyes; the crawling sensation on his skin when he tries to use the bar urinals. Sometimes, Dennis stands over the exact spot where he killed the guy—just stands there, and tries to figure out what the tingling sensation in his stomach is going to make him do first: throw up, or come in his pants. But then Charlie will stand there next to him, knowing, and Dennis will lay his arm over Charlie's shoulders. And then Charlie'll smile and bite down on the mouth of his beer bottle, like it's a soft and tearable thing.

They spend two weeks like this, idyllic. But everything ends eventually.

It's a nice day, when it happens: nice enough that Frank is outside, voluntarily cleaning up around the bar. The rest of them are indoors and, as always, in the midst of some argument—when the door swings open. Dennis is about to reach over and scratch his sister's eyes out, but a glance across the bar stops him. The man who just walked in is clearly not a Paddy's regular. He still has all his hair, all his teeth, and he's dressed (albeit cheaply) in a suit. Dennis' clawed hand freezes in midair, and Dee's sneering mouth snaps shut.

“Good afternoon,” says the man, in a clipped Philadelphia accent. “Would you happen to know the owners of this establishment?”

“We're the owners!” Mac chimes in excitedly. “Not her, she's just a waitress; but us, we're the owners.”

The man holds up a badge. “Detective Louis, missing persons. You wouldn't mind answering a few questions, would you?”

“Oh no, not at all, officer! Although I'm not sure what the problem would be. You see, I'm security, and I keep a pretty tight ship around here.”

God, where did Mac learn to be such a candy-ass? Dennis wonders.

Generally, a cop in the bar meant at least cause for concern, possibly a reason to run for your life, and, on at least one occasion, the beginnings of an armed stand-off. But this guy wasn't here about the gang's usual crimes, like theft or assault. He assumes that Mac and Dee, at least, know they aren't responsible for a missing person. Dennis looks over, past his sister, and sees Charlie looking firmly back.

“Have any of you seen this man before?”

“Let me take a look,” Mac tries to pull the photo out of Louis' outstretched hand, but the cop has too firm a grip, and Mac stumbles forward with the effort. “Uh, well, I don't think that's—”

Dennis clears his throat. “Can I have a look at—”

“Yeah, we've never seen that boner before in our lives,” Dee breaks in. “Anyway, you're a cop, so can you do something about the freaky mugger who's been hanging around here? Last week, he stole my purse. I want to make a complaint. I was carrying thirt—I mean, I had five hundred dollars in there, and I'd like—”

“Ma'am, larceny is not my department. You'll have to go down to the station and file a report.”

“Uh, but you're here right now, so I'll tell you what: you can just write down what I say, and then when you go back, _you_ make up the report, all right? So, this guy, he was maybe six foot, and real ugly, just fuckin—”

“I'm afraid I can't do anything about your stolen purse until you've gone through the proper channels, ma'am.”

“Dee, next time you see that creep, just let me know and I'll,” Mac twirls his hands around in what's probably supposed to be a karate move. “Kick his ass.”

“I definitely will let you know, because seeing you get beat to shit will be hilarious, but I also want my purse back, so if I could just—”

“Pardon me, my good sir, but mightn't I perchance have a look at thy portrait, get a gander at the old chap—” begins Charlie, in an accent that is supposed to be, maybe, British? Or German; Dennis doesn't know, but there's absolute rage in his eyes as he reaches up behind Charlie, with as much subtly as possible given that they're standing two feet from a _goddamn cop, _and stops Charlie's stupid accent short with a sharp pull to his hair. Charlie's head jerks back and he lets a voiceless popping noise out of his throat.

Dennis mouths _shut the fuck up_ at Charlie and turns back to the cop in a panic. Fortunately, Detective Louis didn't notice Charlie's unbelievably stupid outburst. He's too distracted by Mac grinding up against his crotch. Mac is, ostensibly, trying to demonstrate a judo throw—which isn't even karate, goddamn it. Can't Mac even keep the martial arts he doesn't know straight?

Of course not. Mac can't keep anything straight.

“Let go of my hair,” Charlie says through his teeth. Dennis realizes he's been tightening his grip while watching Mac. Grudgingly, he releases it.

“We agreed: no accents!” Dennis whispers.

“Okay, one—I never agreed to that, and two—the guy's not even paying attention to us! I had to do something.”

“You didn't have to do _that_!" Dennis clenches his fist so hard his hand starts to shake, then releases it with a deep breath. "All right. We can salvage this. Just follow my lead.”

By the time Dennis and Charlie collect themselves, Detective Louis has managed to pry Mac off of him. Louis is using one arm to hold Mac back, as Mac struggles to demonstrate more moves; with his other arm, Louis is trying to control Dee. She's still nagging about her purse and demanding to see his badge number; generally swarming around like the overgrown mosquito that she is.

“Excuse me, officer,” says Dennis, stepping forward. “But can I get a closer look at that picture?”

The cop reaches into his breast pocket and pulls the photo back out for Dennis, then returns to swatting at his two human parasites.

Dennis stares at the portrait for what seems like an appropriate length of time. Charlie was right: Radoslaw really _did_ look different with his face attached. The guy's not even drunk in the picture; he looks so normal. Like he's a completely average man, not someone who had his bones cut up like a slaughtered hog, someone whose organs Dennis could still identify by touch and smell. “I think I've seen this guy around before. Don't remember his name, though.”

“Radoslaw Niemczyk,” the detective says. “According to his kid, this bar was one of his favorites. Has he been here in the last week?”

“No, I don't think so. Has he, Charlie?”

“Nope, haven't seen him.”

“But I wouldn't have expected to see him again, after the last time we talked to him.”

“Last time you talked to him? Why, what did he say then?” asks the cop.

Dee suddenly stops grabbing at Detective Louis and turns towards Dennis. Her eyes go narrow. “Since when do you douchebags actually talk to our customers?”

“Oh Dee, you fool, you complete moron,” Dennis says airily. “I'm a bartender. Of course I talk to people, and unlike your drunken, incompetent skank-ass, _I _can actually remember what they say.”

“So what _did _he say?” presses Louis, who seems relieved that Dee's usual torrent of insults has been redirected towards Dennis.

“He told me—” But just as Dennis starts to speak, the back door of the bar flies open, and Frank bursts in. He's got a huge leaf blower in his hands, and it's whirring out of control, dragging Frank in zig-zags all over the bar. As the machine roars close to their group, everyone winces and instinctively moves their hands over their ears.

“What the hell are you doing, Frank?” Dennis screams over the sound.

“I can't stop it!” yells Frank, as the leaf blower tugs him into one of the tables. “I made the machine too powerful and now it's gonna take over!”

“Just like Terminator!” Mac contributes.

“Frank, just turn it off!” Charlie yells.

“The button doesn't work! It doesn't listen to humans anymore, Chawlie!”

“What did Radoslaw Niemczyk say to you?” asks the cop, or at least, that's what Dennis thinks he's asking. He can barely make out anything over the roar of the leaf blower.

“He said nothing in Philly had ever done him any good! That even his name was worthless in this city!” God, somehow the noise seemed to be getting even louder. “He seemed pretty drunk, but he said he wanted to go somewhere else, be someone else, and make a fresh start, without all the baggage!”

“This is how it all ends!" screams Frank. "Mark Zuckerberg sics his drones on us and we all melt into orange goo!”

The cop is trying to take notes while keeping his shoulders hunched up over his ears. “And you haven't seen him since?”

“No! Do you think he really could have created a new identity?”

Detective Louis shakes his head. “Was that all he said?”

“Yeah!”

“All right,” the cop says, as he retreats to the front door. “Thank you for your cooperation!”

Mac yells something about how much he honors the guy's service, but by that point, he's already gone. The only disturbance in the bar is the deafening machine whine and the periodic crashes as Frank goes careening into walls.

\---

Later, after the leaf blower has been smashed up into its cheap Chinese pieces, and the others are back to their usual distractions, Charlie and Dennis sneak into the back office. They stand pressed together against the door, just for a few moments, as they listen for any approaching sounds. It's all right, though: they're alone.

“So that,” says Dennis, thinking back over their run in with the law. “Was amazing.”

“So amazing, dude! We totally fooled that stupid pig!”

“We're good.”

“We're like, so good at murder!”

“He completely bought our story!”

“We got him hooked, then we lined up and sank into him.”

“Not how that expression goes," says Dennis. "But you're right. God, I feel so alive!”

Charlie nods, bouncing a little with the excitement. Suddenly, his eyes light up, and he slips by Dennis, back over to the desk. He ducks under it. Dennis hears a few scratches and a click, and then Charlie pops back into view, holding a ziplock bag of white powder. He catches Dennis' gaze and slowly runs his tongue over his bottom lip. “Want some?”

Powder cocaine isn't like crack, right? What's the worst that could happen? “Absolutely.”

Charlie hums and dips his finger into the bag.

“Wait, not here.”

“Why not?” asks Charlie, who did not stop at Dennis' request. He sticks one whitened finger into his own mouth and draws it out slowly; it glistens with spit. At the end, his lips smack together like a kiss.

Dennis swallows hard and shakes his head. “Because it's lame. C'mon, let's go out somewhere.”

“All right, whatever dude,” Charlie shrugs and pushes the bag into his pocket, ready to head out.

“No, wait, lemme—I'll do _one_ bump first.”

Charlie rolls his eyes and fishes the coke back out, and Dennis scoops a little up with his finger and pushes it under his nose. He inhales hard, and it suddenly strikes him that this isn't sexy at all and that Charlie definitely outdid him, but whatever, goddamn it—he can be seductive later. Right now, he just wants to be high.

After a little more than just the one bump, they're back in Dennis' car, like old times. Dennis wants to go to a club, at first, but it's still daytime. And even if it wasn't, was it really worth the hassle? Of course, _he_ could easily get in anywhere he wanted, because he's still young and sexy and hip—do people still say _hip_?—but how is he supposed to get anywhere dragging Charlie around? And why do they need to go clubbing, anyway? They already own their own bar.

So, against his better judgment, Dennis lets Charlie suggest a spot. He leads Dennis on another twisty ride, and they end up on some hilly overlook in Fairmount Park. It's more of a parking spot for high school kids than a place for two adult men to hang out in the middle of the day. It definitely isn't Dennis' usual style, although it does have a view over the city, which he has to admit is picturesque. But more than it not being _his_ style—

“How did you find this place?” Didn't Charlie usually hang out under bridges? What the hell was he doing up here?

“Actually, Dee showed it to me,” says Charlie. He cranks up the car stereo before hopping out, so they can still hear it as they stretch their legs. “I figured you'd like it too, because of the whole twin thing.”

“_Dee_ brought you up here?”

“Yeah,” says Charlie, all nonchalant, noncommittal. “She keeps trying to get me alone so she can ask about you. I think you're freaking her out.”

“Nosy bitch, that nosy bitch!”

Charlie laughs. “We're lucky _she's_ not the detective after us.”

“Oh, please. She doesn't know anything,” scoffs Dennis. “Right?”

“The only way she could possibly know is if she can read minds," Charlie says. "Which actually—”

“No,” says Dennis flatly.

“Don't just dismiss it, dude! It's been studied. Twins have the same brain waves and shit. You could be broadcasting to her and not even know it!”

The two of them lean on the trunk of the car, looking out over Philadelphia. The stereo is blasting Dennis' '80s mix, which is what he always listens to, but it feels all the more fitting while he's blitzed cocaine. He snorts a little more and tips his head back. Listens to the reverb on the drums, thumping like blood in his ears.

Charlie exhales. “Well, even if she does find out, Radoslaw's shark shit by now.”

Dennis feels a hard twinge in his stomach. Probably just the coke. Maybe he should do another bump—

“Hey, take it easy, dude,” says Charlie. He reaches up and touches just underneath Dennis' nose. “You're bleeding.”

He starts to pull his hand away, with its first two fingers stained red. But on impulse, Dennis snatches Charlie's hand back, brings it up to his own mouth and gently sucks, cleaning off the blood with the flat of his tongue. Charlie relaxes his fingers and shivers. Oh yeah, this is way hotter than rubbing coke on your own gums. Dennis definitely won.

Dennis runs his lips up and down Charlie's fingers a couple more times, then pulls off and pops his lips together, just to rub it in. Charlie keeps staring hazily at Dennis' mouth. If his whacked out system works anything like Dennis', then all that excess cocaine energy must be making him really horn—

Suddenly, Charlie snaps out of his daze. His eyes drift up from Dennis' lips and he notices, almost innocently, “Whoa, your eyes are so big.”

Well, yeah. That'd be the cocaine. But Dennis says, “The better to see you with, my dear.”

Charlie tilts his head for a second and then lets out a high-pitched laugh, almost a giggle. He bites his lip. One of his hands snakes up Dennis' biceps, gently working his fingers into the muscle. “And what big arms you have.”

“The better to—nah, no, I can't do this.”

“Red Riding Hood isn't—”

“It's too much.”

“Your arms aren't even that big,” Charlie points out.

“Well, I—okay, fair. I'm more of an otter.”

“Otter?” Charlie asks. Then he laughs again, sounding less like a porn star this time. “Ohh, I get it— 'cause you're washed up!”

“Excuse me?”

“Hah, oh man, you're—shit, wait, what's that?” Charlie twists his head, listening for the new sound on the car stereo. “Is that fucking “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go?” Dude, you gotta get some better music on here.”

Charlie still looks dreamy and friendly, but the more he talks, the more Dennis is getting pissed off. He clenches his jaw and says, “It's a classic.”

“Come on, it's '80s pop at its worst! Way too cutesy and what, four chords? Five? Wham sucks, dude—admit it.”

“George Michael has great range!”

“You just like him because he's an otter, too.”

“I'd say he's more a twink, actually,” Dennis murmurs.

“What?”

“Fine, you don't want to listen to Wham? You don't have to,” snaps Dennis. He pulls out his car keys and rolls the engine over again. The music stalls, then fades out as he turns off the volume. He even bothers to put on his seat belt, because with all the cocaine he's had, he's almost certain he's going to crash.

Seeing this, Charlie grabs for his own door handle. “Where we goin'?”

At the same moment, Dennis hits the lock. “I'm going home. And you can go fuck yourself.”

Charlie stands there in absolute bewilderment as Dennis shifts into gear and drives away. He thinks about that look on Charlie's face while he drives, and even as he gets back into the apartment. No one else is home to distract him, so it's Charlie on his mind. Charlie, not even looking mad as he drove away; Charlie's soft skin, the glint of his half-closed eyes. The coke is still thick in Dennis' blood; he definitely can't get to sleep like this.

He lies back on the bed anyway, with his clothes off, and closes his eyes. Maybe he can jack off to relax. He tries to go back to that moment, up over the city, before Charlie ruined everything with his stupid mouth. That mouth Dennis was thinking of all the way home. But now, in bed with his hand down his briefs, suddenly Dennis feels cold, and all he can think of is that dumbstruck DMV portrait in the cop's hand: of Radoslaw's face in his final picture.


	3. Chapter 3

The dead man's disappearance makes the papers, but only once, and only barely. His sole legacy is a blurb, nestled in between an ad for Viagra and an article on the bacterial makeup of Philadelphia's public pools. If Dennis wasn't looking for it, he would never have noticed. The notice is a blurry, black and white reproduction of the photo Dennis got from the cop, with Radoslaw's age and last known location printed underneath.

For the next two weeks, Dennis grabs every paper he can get his hands on, waiting for news of a nationwide manhunt. When he's optimistic, he hopes he'll see a criminal profile on himself. But, day after day, there's nothing. The guy is just gone. And no one is ever going to know what happened to him.

The open-wound memory of the killing starts to scab over in Dennis' mind. He probes around in the protective scar tissue and sees a version of the corpse that looks cheap and fake, like a Halloween prop. He sees that he could never have been upset by that, and he realizes that he wasn't—that the pain in his chest and stomach all this time have just been indigestion, and if he isn't sleeping well, that's because he hasn't been getting laid enough.

Realizing that the murder case is basically closed, Dennis goes back to the first newspaper, the one with the blurb, and clips it out. It's not much, but it looks like the only trophy he's going to get. And, now that he's this deep in it, he does want a trophy. There's still one thing time hasn't faded. It's the memory of standing over the guy before he died, adrenaline pulsing. The thrill of the kill.

He and Charlie are over their honeymoon phase; they've fought and made up and fought again at least a dozen times since that day over Fairmount Park. Charlie doesn't say how he got home and Dennis never asks. It doesn't matter. The bag of cocaine's used up, but there's still a thrumming in both their veins.

“What's that?”

Dennis flinches as Mac leans in over his shoulder, watching as he cuts the dead guy out of the newspaper. He didn't hear Mac come in, but he should have known Mac would materialize just to annoy him; that nosy jackass.

“Some guy went missing,” he says, his voice as light and casual as he can make it. “I thought we could hang his information up at the bar.” Hadn't Charlie asked to hang a picture?

“Why?”

“What do you mean, _why_?” snaps Dennis. “I can't just do something nice?”

“No,” Mac says.

“_No_?”

Mac's wearing a confused little half-smile as he sits down beside Dennis on the couch. The late light is streaming in through Dee's window, and he has to duck his head a little to keep it out of his eyes. He looks at Dennis with uncomfortable earnestness. “What's with you, bro? You've been acting super weird lately. I mean, where did you even get all these newspapers?”

“I am—I'm politically engaged. I keep abreast of, uh, issues, and—I just like to read the news, okay; is that so weird?”

“Yes,” says Mac, patiently. “Nobody's read a physical newspaper in like, ten years.”

“It's an American pastime.”

“Cutting dead assholes out of the newspaper is an _American pastime_?”

Dennis scoffs and turns his head so he doesn't have to look Mac in the eye. With more forced casualness, he asks, “Why do you assume he's dead?”

“All of them are dead, dude. If you don't come back in seventy-two hours, you're dead as shit. Everybody knows it.”

“Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know I was in the presence of an FBI specialist! God knows that you have _such_ expert insight into the criminal mind. Fucking Agent Scully over here, thank you for your wisdom,” says Dennis, glaring into Radoslaw's lifeless printed eyes instead of into Mac's. He attacks a wrinkle in the newspaper clipping, smoothing it with his thumbnail so frantically that he's liable to start the thing on fire.

“See, that's what I'm talking about,” Mac says. “You're obviously distracted. You can't even come up with a good insult for me.”

“Come on, I called you a woman. I attacked your one source of self-worth,” There's no way Dennis would put with one quarter of Mac's shit if he were a woman. “And that's not a big enough insult? What, are you some kind of liberal pussy now?”

Mac shrugs, unphased. “At least Scully's Catholic. And she gets to fuck David Duchovny.”

“So it's a bad insult just because you, personally, want to fuck David Duchovny?”

“Well not modern Duchovny, because Jesus, what happened to that guy—”

“Why am I listening to this?” Dennis mutters.

“You never _do _listen to me, man,” Mac whines. “You don't do anything with me anymore. Is this about me jerking off on your underwear drawer? Because I told you, that wasn't—”

“Mac, I don't care,” he interrupts, and to make sure Mac shuts up, he reaches out and cups his cheek. Mac leans into him, pressing his full weight against Dennis' hand and shutting his eyes. Dennis exhales. He thinks he should teach Mac a lesson. He wants to dig his nails into the vulnerable flesh of Mac's face. When he tenses his fingers, Mac flinches slightly, but he doesn't pull a way. Dennis trails one finger down a vein in Mac's neck and thinks, I always figured if I killed someone, it'd be you.

He can do one better. “I'm going out to dinner with Charlie tonight. To Guigino's.”

Mac tenses against his hand, his eyes going wide. His mouth hangs open for a moment before he asks, in the smallest voice, “Why?”

The real answer is that they're celebrating their anniversary. Well, monthiversary—it's been one month since they cut a guy into chum together. Getting away with murder warrants a celebration, and they've been planning their dinner-date for several days.

Dennis had even taken Charlie out shopping the other night and bought him new suit: one that didn't smell like mothballs and piss. After the tailor hemmed it to fit, they'd slipped next door into the mall's liquor store, and Dennis had hit on the woman behind the counter as a distraction while Charlie stole a couple bottles of wine (it was okay that he didn't get her number, because it was only a distraction, and he didn't really want to bang her anyway, that bitch, that ugly old bitch). The wine wasn't enough to get truly drunk off—at least, not for them—but it kept them grabbing and leaning on each other for the rest of the night.

At midnight, they'd slipped into a movie theater showing some nerd shit, and Dennis had left his jacket in the seat and gone to the bathroom. He remembers the bathroom, because even though it was a lot cleaner, the layout was the same as Paddy's. Had one of the ushers ever chopped up a customer in here? Would their janitor have helped them do it? Dennis had looked into the bathroom mirror and wiped the old makeup off his face with a paper towel. Maybe it had just been the lighting, but he'd thought his complexion looked better. There was a nice tone to his skin, almost a glow. He hadn't reapplied anything, just gone back into the theater, where he'd found Charlie passed out in his seat. Dennis had sat beside him and drifted off with his head pressed against Charlie's shoulder. They hadn't gone home.

Dennis blinks back the memory. Mac is still staring at him. He's waiting for an answer about the dinner with Charlie, an answer he doesn't really want to hear, and Dennis is about to provide him with a suitably painful lie—when he hears a bang. He whips his head around and sees Frank, who has lobbed himself through the apartment door like a cannonball. Dee is standing behind him with a set of keys in her hand, looking disgusted, but Dennis doesn't have much time to register that, because suddenly, Frank is jamming a huge hunting rifle against Dennis' chest.

“Whoa, what the hell, Frank?” Dennis asks. But Frank has pointed a gun at him enough times that he's not really worried.

At least, not until Dee stalks in after him. She ignores Frank and focuses in on Dennis, a big, cold smile on her face. “Oh, you wanna ask him that, Dennis? Really? Why don't you go first? Explain what the hell has been going on with _you_.”

Dee's eyes are narrowed and have a sinister glint that's making the hairs on Dennis' neck raise. No, she couldn't possibly know—

“Been staying out a lot of nights recently, haven't you, Dennis? Starting around, say, a month ago?”

Dennis swallows hard, but his throat stays dry. “No more than usual.”

“Oh really?" Dee smirks, playing up the psych-major thing. She tilts her head, like she's thinking it over, and nods to herself. "Then you shouldn't mind telling us what you've been doing at night, right? Because we're all interested to find out. You never told me; you never told Frank. You haven't been talking to any of us recently—except for Charlie.”

It's Charlie. Charlie must have ratted him out. Oh god, oh fuck, he's going to prison. He's going to die in prison, unless Frank's finger twitches and he bleeds out on Dee's upholstery. His chest is rising too shallowly, but he can't remember how to breathe any other way.

Dee continues, “You know, Charlie called me up a couple weeks ago. He needed me to pick him up because you left him up by the park. That's a nice spot, isn't it, Dennis? Pretty romantic. What did you two talk about up there?”

Did Charlie tell her about the murder just because Dennis made him find his own way home? Jesus Christ, it wasn't that big a deal! How could Charlie do this to him? He had trusted that little shit. He'd thought—

Dennis feels like he might be sick, but his jaw stays locked, like his mouth is wired shut. He can't make himself answer.

“When I picked Charlie up, it reminded me of another time you disappeared without telling any of us. The night you came back smelling like cleaning supplies. What got you so dirty, Dennis?”

Dee perches on the coffee table in front of him and looks into his eyes, all smug. She folds up her overly-long legs in a way that is _extremely_ bird-like, and god, Dennis wishes he could make that joke and make the guys laugh; but Frank is still in front of him, just off to his left with the rifle, and Mac is sitting in a complete daze on his right, with his eyes misted over.

“Charlie was unusually clean after that night, too. Did you two do something together? Spend some time together,” Dee leans up to him and smirks. “Down in the sewers?”

Dennis says, “What?”

“Don't you hurt my little boy!” Frank suddenly yells. He points his gun at the end table next to Dennis and blasts it. There's a boom that makes them all jump; the table lamp gets fucking obliterated, as does the wall several feet behind it. The recoil throws Frank backwards onto his ass.

“What the shit, Frank!” Dee's piercing shriek is the only thing louder than the ringing in Dennis' ears. “This is my apartment, remember? _My_ apartment!”

“You stay away from him, y'hear?” Frank wiggles around on the floor for a few seconds before he's able to regain his balance. When he finally manages to stand, he shoves the gun barrel back against Dennis' chest. “Ya pervert! Don't come near my boy!”

Dennis can see what used to be the lamp beside him, broken down into its individual elements and compounds. Frank isn't fucking around here. If he shoots, Dennis isn't going to live long enough to get CPR or a ride to the hospital—even if, by some miracle, one of his _friends_ here is willing to give it. He should be terrified. And he is—but he's also so confused that it momentarily overrides the fear, and he asks, “Frank, is that an accent? Are you trying to do an accent? What is this?”

“Oh, cut the shit, Dennis,” says Dee. “We all know you've been forcing Charlie to bang you.”

Dennis thinks, _forcing_? And he thinks, bang _me_? He thinks he should probably respond in some way. Dennis lets out a deep breath, and almost laughs, and all he says is, “Huh?”

“You didn't think I'd figure it out, did you? Well guess what, bitch,” Dee points her thumbs as herself. “Sweet Dee can always smell a bangin'.”

Dennis does remember her uncovering several of their parents' affairs when they were kids, but— “I am not banging Charlie!”

“He is,” says Mac, in an unnaturally even voice. Dennis turns; he'd almost forgotten Mac was next to him. Mac has his hands balled into fists, and he looks away from Dennis as he says, “He has a date with him tonight, at Guigino's.”

“Oh, come on. That doesn't mean anything,” Dennis tries to lay a hand on Mac's shoulder, but Mac pulls away. “Mac, _we_ go to Guigino's!”

“Exactly,” says Dee, with a knowing look.

Dennis shakes his head. “Frank, do you really believe what she's telling you?”

“Frank was suspicious before I talked to him,” says Dee. “You two weren't subtle.”

“We aren't even fucking!” Dennis says, voice rising in pitch.

Dee rolls her eyes. “Fine, I don't give a shit if you won't admit it, but you still gotta stop. It's disgusting.”

“He's too good for you,” Frank mutters.

“I'm literally not—wait, I'm sorry, _disgusting_?” Dennis holds up one hand, mostly as an opportunity to turn the conversation around, but partly because he's genuinely offended. “What was that again? I think I missed a word from Margaret Thatcher here. Did you say me being with a man is _disgusting_?”

“Oh, come on,” groans Dee. “Don't do that, don't play the gay card.”

“You all hound Mac to come out,” says Dennis, trying to reach out to the one person here who isn't currently attacking him. “But if anyone tries to have gay sex, then it's _disgust_—”

“Don't bring me into this,” Mac growls.

“Fuck off, that's not what I meant,” Dee says. “Charlie _is_ disgusting, physically disgusting! You know it, I know it, god, everybody who's ever banged him knows it.”

Wait, what did she mean by that? Dennis narrows his eyes.

“It ain't right for a man to come after a simple boy—”

Dennis cuts him off, saying, "Would you lay off the boy stuff, Frank? Jesus Christ. Charlie is not your boy. And I'm not after any boys, okay? I'm straight.”

Well, none of them have any real proof that he isn't.

“Oh god, no, I can't put up with you both doing this,” Dee shakes her head. “Mac's bad enough, but you can't suddenly decide to think you're straight, too.”

“What do you mean _suddenly_?” Dennis bristles. “I've always been straight.”

Dee scrunches up her face. “Were you? Oh man, I did not get that at all.”

“Nah,” says Frank. “Ever since you were a little kid, you were real fruity.”

“Again with the homophobia!” But to stress that this isn't about _his_ sexuality, Dennis says, “Don't do this in front of Mac. He's the real victim here.”

And Mac, who's sitting with his arms clasped around his stomach, really looks the part.

Dee agrees, “That one was homophobic, Frank, and I'm gonna need you to stop that 'cause you're making me look bad. But what I said wasn't homophobic. Anyway, the fact that Dennis was always a little sissy has nothing to do with him chugging dick now. Look at Mac and Charlie: they were both rugged kids, and now they're no straighter than Dennis.”

“Charlie's no queer,” Frank insists. “Dennis just got inside his head.”

“Oh please, _I_ got inside _Charlie's_ head? He was the one who—” Dennis cuts himself off and furrows his brow. “Why do you care so much if I'm banging Charlie, anyway?”

“You already got Mac. If you get Charlie, too, then you outnumber us normals—”

“Shut up, Frank, I wasn't asking you,” Dennis snaps, and he turns towards Dee.

Dee's mouth works open and closed a few times. Eventually, she looks down at her feet and shrugs. “We can't just start fucking each other. It's gonna make the group fall apart."

“Come on," Dennis shakes his head. "We've been torturing each other nonstop for thirty years, and that hasn't broken us up. It isn't going to all collapse because of a little banging.”

He looks over at Mac, half-expecting a response about some pagan saying the same thing at Sodom and Gomorrah. But Mac stays silent.

“Isn't it? 'Cause it's been ten minutes, and Frank wants to kill you, and Mac looks about ready to drink bleach—”

“Shut the fuck up, Dee.”

“—and the weird thing between you and Charlie obviously won't last, and when you break up, _he'll _hate you, too. You can't DENNIS a guy you see every day. You do know that, right?”

“For the last time, I am not DENNISing Charlie because I don't want to f— because I'm not fucking him!”

“Oh yeah?” says Dee. “Then what's been going on with you two this whole month? Give us a better explanation. Come on, Dennis.”

The three of them look at him expectantly. Dennis opens his mouth.

He closes it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is me ripping off the scene in "Mac Is a Serial Killer" where everyone thinks Mac killed someone, but he's really in a secret relationship. I thought the inverse of that would be fun.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember that this fic is set in 2016... a period drama, if you will. It's slightly relevant for this chapter.

The incredible thing is, Charlie's not only on time for their dinner date, he's early. Dennis almost can't believe it when he pulls up to Guigino's and sees Charlie already standing at the door, fiddling with his suit lapels. He looks nice in clothes that actually match and fit, and he smells clean—though that's almost wasted, since he's doused himself in a heavy layer of Frank's old man cologne.

The restaurant's only faintly humming with life, and as they walk to their seats, the tables they pass are mostly empty. Wednesday isn't the most popular time for a fancy night out, Dennis supposes. But he's used to this sort of thing. A bar is a strange, nocturnal animal that rests on weekdays and demands attention on Friday and Saturday nights. Anyone who wants to keep a place like that open has to deal with living out of step from the rest of society. It's normal for him; but that doesn't mean it isn't isolating. Sometimes, Dennis thinks that every night he stays up past two AM leaches away a bit of his humanity.

Despite the lack of customers, the place must be understaffed or something, because their waiter is weirdly on-edge.

“Frank came over to kill me today,” says Dennis, off the cuff, as they sit down.

Charlie laughs, and the waiter's eyebrows instantly hike up to his hairline. He shoves the menus at them and leaves without bothering to get a drink order.

“Yeah, with that big game rifle, right?” Charlie grabs two breadsticks in one hand and says, around a mouthful of half-chewed bread, “Frank told me he killed a whole herd of endangered elephants with that thing.”

“Wait, so you knew he was going to attack me?”

“Sure. I was at the apartment when he came to pick up the gun.”

“Then why didn't you warn me?” asks Dennis, through clenched teeth.

Charlie shrugs. “I thought it would be funny.”

Exasperated with the conversation, Dennis starts snapping his fingers for service. Their waiter tries to avoid eye contact, but there's only so much he can do to look busy in a nearly-empty restaurant. Before long, he drags his feet over to the table, where Dennis barks his order and throws the menu back in the guy's face. Charlie says he'll have the same as Dennis. It's only because the menu at Guigino's doesn't have pictures, leaving Charlie with no idea what his other options are—but Dennis still feels like it's something intimate, that Charlie will follow him like that.

As their dazed waiter wanders off, Dennis says, “So, you know why Frank wanted to kill me, right?”

Charlie nods.

Dennis thinks back over Frank's visit, trying to make sense of his own thoughts before he dumps them on Charlie. He grabs his butter knife and twists it in his hands, a bit nervously. The dull blade flashes in the light. “It actually took me a while to figure it out for myself. When I heard Frank and Dee screaming about the secrets I was hiding with you, I thought they were talking about the dead—well, I thought you sold me out.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Why _didn't_ you do that?” asks Dennis. If someone had asked _him_ for help getting rid of a body, he can't imagine he would have given it. “Why didn't you do that immediately?”

Charlie responds with a boyish smile and another shrug. “'Cause you're my best friend.”

“I am?” asks Dennis in surprise, before quickly covering with, “Obviously. It's impossible to have a conversation with Mac anymore.”

“No, dude, we've been over this before. You're both my best friends. _Both _you guys. And Frank too, even though it's kind of different with him. And actually Dee—”

“We're losing the significance of _best friend_ here.”

“Come on, don't get clingy,” Charlie scolds. “I get enough of that from Frank.”

“Oh god, Frank. What a crazy guy,” Dennis shakes his head with overblown amusement, but keeps Charlie always in the corner of his eye. Charlie's face is too even under his smile. “Pretty crazy how the man who psychologically tortured me for my entire youth”—not that he isn't still young—“Has now decided that he, a one hundred year old man, actually _does _want to be a father, after all. Not to me, of course, but to you, my burnout friend from high school. Don't you think that's crazy?”

“Hey, I never asked Frank to do shit," Charlie points across the table at him—only a gesture for now, but hands tense and ready for a fight. "You're seriously jealous that he wants to control my life? You want him to be _your_ overbearing dad? Decide who _you're_ allowed to—”

“No! I don't need a fucking father anymore, obviously. I'm forty years old! But maybe he could have given a shit back when—” Dennis' lip twitches. “Whatever. God,” he rubs a hand on his forehead, takes a deep breath, and tries to get back to his point. “Where do you think Frank even got uh, _that_ idea? About the two of us.”

“Well, you know,” Charlie's suddenly hesitant. Instead of looking at Dennis, he inspects the tablecloth: running the end of his fork along a crease in the fabric. “We _have_ been spending a lot of time together.”

“But it's a pretty big leap from this to... that.” Dennis stares at Charlie, his face perfectly still, until Charlie finally glances back up. Their eyes meet. Dennis speaks again, trying to sound casual, but with the words coming a little too fast, “Dee said the gang would fall apart if we started fucking.”

Charlie's eyes, locked with Dennis', bulge comically out of his head. He starts coughing; his face turning bright red, wet from his runny eyes and nose. It's not exactly the reaction Dennis was looking for. But it does make him strangely grateful for how slow their service has been. They aren't eating yet, so when Charlie coughs directly across the table, he's only hacking up spit, instead of spewing lobster paccheri directly into Dennis' face.

After a few sips of water, Charlie manages, “_Dee_ said that?” Then Dennis thinks he's about to start choking again, but he's only laughing. “What, like you're Yoko Ono?”

“Can't you come up with a better insult than just calling me a woman?” huffs Dennis.

Charlie sets down his water and snaps a new breadstick apart in his hands. His eyes are dark, like what he's breaking is bone. “It doesn't have to be an insult.”

Their wait for dinner drags on, and Charlie starts to wilt in his chair. He's single-handedly finished off the complementary breadsticks long before the waiter returns. Dennis was never going to leave a tip, but he's starting to think Guigino's should tip _him_ for his incredible patience, by the time their meals finally arrives.

Charlie moves to sit up straighter as his food is placed in front of him, and his shin knocks against Dennis'. He immediately starts to draw his leg back, but Dennis stops him. Dennis hooks his foot around the back of Charlie's ankle, locking their legs together. Charlie, with no visible reaction on his face, holds up his glass for a refill. Under the table, he pats his shoe against Dennis' calf.

Dennis keeps his expression even, too, and pretends to look over his plate. As the waiter moves away, he releases his hold on Charlie's leg. He's hoping that Charlie won't move, that he'll keep their point of contact—but Charlie draws back out of reach as quickly as he can. Dennis tries not to take that as a blow to his ego.

He succeeds. Mostly.

They start to eat. Dennis is so focused on mentally critiquing the quality of the food that he's nearly forgotten about the awkward bit of footsie—until he feels another brush under the table. This time, _he's _almost the one who draws back in surprise. But he holds himself still and feels as Charlie, who has evidently slipped off his shoe, moves in closer. His stocking foot starts rubbing against the inside of Dennis' knee.

Dennis is suddenly hyper-aware of the rhythm of his breath, the weight of his tongue in his mouth. The pressure on his leg inches closer to his torso, slowly brushing over the bottom of his thigh. It's a surprisingly light touch. As Charlie moves further and further down his leg, Dennis' fingers clench involuntarily. He can't deny that part of him is into this. Not only is Charlie interested in him: he's so into Dennis that he's willing to get dangerously near third base in an expensive restaurant. But it _is _weird that it's with his foot.

Fluttering his eyes open, Dennis looks across the table at Charlie. He's slumped way down in his seat now, because he's short and his leg isn't going to reach Dennis any other way. Conceptually, it makes perfect sense—but the sight of Charlie melting off his chair like a damn Dali painting isn't exactly making Dennis rock hard.

All the less so when he sees Charlie, in complete defiance of fine plate of food in front of him, grab something out of his suit pocket and stuff it into his mouth. Dennis sniffs in disgust and catches a familiar scent.

“Are you eating pocket cheese?”

Charlie, whose attention had been entirely focused under the table, jumps at the question. His foot immediately pulls away from Dennis' groin, and at this point, that's something of a relief. “Oh, uh, yeah, I'm having a little. Why, you want some?”

Ignoring the offer, Dennis asks, “Why the hell did you bring you disgusting, dirty cheese into a nice restaurant?”

“I wasn't sure they'd have cheese here.”

“This is an Italian restaurant. It's a major part of their cuisine!”

“Yeah, but I just got what you got, and it doesn't really have cheese in it. Plus, this lobster doesn't agree with me, man,” Charlie says, rubbing a hand over his stomach. “I think I might be allergic to shellfish.”

“Bitch, I have seen you eat so much goddamn shellfish; there's no way you have an allergy.”

“Well, I must be developing one, because this lobster is making me like, crazy sweaty.”

“You don't think maybe there could be another explanation as to why you're sweaty right now?” asks Dennis, kicking him under the table.

“Ow! What the hell, man? I don't _think_ anything—”

“That's for sure,” Dennis mutters.

“—I'm just trying to have a nice night, okay? Can we do that? Can we have a nice night, Dennis?”

Dennis lets a breath out through his nose and forces his jaw to unclench. “You're right: we shouldn't be squabbling. This is an important occasion.”

“Hell yeah it is, killer,” Charlie says easily, like he's just using an expression.

Holding up his glass, Dennis says, “To our dominion over the lower lifeforms of Philadelphia.”

“Yeah, dominion,” Charlie parrots, as he clinks his glass to Dennis'. He takes a long drink. “You sure did dominate that guy.”

“Of course. I always do.”

Charlie very subtly rolls his eyes. "Sure, but it's not every month you beat a stranger's meat harder than you beat your own.”

“I guess so,” says Dennis, frowning as he remembers the dead guy's smashed-in face. “If I ever jack off so hard my skull cracks open, that'll be a serious problem.”

“I'm pretty sure that happened to me a couple times in high school—heyo! Waiter! Can we get some fuckin' shots over here?”

\---

Apparently, Guigino's is too classy a place to serve _fuckin' shots_ to a pair of disheveled, belligerent forty-year-olds, but whatever. Their booze is overpriced, anyway. Dennis and Charlie head back to the bar for drinks instead. They arrive at Paddy's at peak time, but the bar is still closed. Apparently, everyone was so distracted trying to break up Dennis and Charlie that they forgot to do the one fucking thing that's expected of them. So they're losing money tonight, but then, they lose money every night. Every month, a new supply truck comes in. Every month, they roll the fresh kegs into the bar, like they're pushing a boulder up a hill: again, again.

When Charlie and Dennis unlock the door, they relock it behind them, just as fast. They turn on the overhead lights, but leave the neon sign dark. Dennis pulls out a bottle of mid-range tequila from under the counter and Charlie scrounges up a few water-spotted shot glasses. He sets them up along the bar, one by one.

Dennis pours the first round and knocks it back. The two of them don't drink in silence, but they don't say anything consequential, either. Neither of them brings up their intense game of footsie. They closest they get is a brief laugh as they remember the end of their dinner—how Charlie had hip checked the waiter as they left, sending the guy sprawling face-first into a meringue; like an honest-to-god Stooges' routine.

As Dennis goes to pour himself another shot, his hand on the bottle brushes against Charlie's, attempting the same. Their fingers overlap like jagged teeth; Charlie's scars and callouses against Dennis' moisturized and manicured hands.

“I'll pour one for you,” says Dennis, rather gallantly.

“Nah, let me pour _you_ one.”

“I grabbed it first, so—”

“I totally grabbed it before you!” Charlie insists, and he tries to yank the bottle out of Dennis' grasp. The liquid inside sloshes so hard that it nearly spills out the top.

“Just let me pour it! This isn't a big deal.”

“Enough of your pouring,” says Charlie, high-pitched, and with the naked contempt of a much drunker man. “You've got shaky hands.”

Dennis' face scrunches up into a single, concentrated point. “I'll have you know, I have the calm, steady hands of a veterinary surgeon.”

“Yeah, chopped up in your freezer, maybe. But not on your wrists.”

There must be something wrong with Dennis' brain, because it only takes those little, unimportant words for his memory to go wild. He can't even see the bar anymore; it really is like he's back in that bathroom. He can smell the blood, can feel it on his hands, and he can hear the scraping of the saw.

Taking advantage of Dennis' distraction, Charlie snaps the tequila bottle out of his hand. He pours Dennis a second shot before pouring his own, and as he passes the glass to Dennis, their hands meet again. Charlie rubs his thumb on the inside of Dennis' wrist, and it does feel like a hacksaw.

Maybe he's not hemorrhaging bodily, but something in his mind is. Dennis keeps thinking, and the way he sees it, there's no reason for him and Charlie not to fuck. Hell, for all practical purposes, they're fucking already. The gang had a democratic vote, and the truth lost, two-three. The damage is already done, with Mac, and with the others. Charlie and Dennis will never be able to convince them they were wrong, so why not admit they were right?

But Dennis still hesitates. He pounds the next shot and, before he can think better of it, he asks, “Do you think we'd be good together?”

“We're always together,” says Charlie, as he throws back his own glass. His skin is still pale, but Dennis knows that in a few more drinks, it'll be pink, flushed. He's seen Charlie drunk a million times before.

“It's not the same.”

“It is. It's like, C sharp and D flat. It's one sound, but you get caught on the name and think it's something it's not.”

As Charlie goes to continue his stupid metaphor, he brings his arm forward with a sweeping gesture and knocks the tequila bottle over.

“Hah! Who has shaky hands now, bitch,” says Dennis. He sets the bottle upright, but a lot of the tequila has already flowed out and is now pooling on the bar.

Charlie's hands are actually pretty steady as he uses them to gather up the loose alcohol. He guides it off the counter and into his shot glass. Although some of the tequila splashes onto the floor, a surprising amount ends up in Charlie's mouth, as he pounds his dirty, cobbled-together shot.

Dennis shakes his head, disgusted, and Charlie mutters something about the five second rule. He cleans the remaining tequila off his hands the way a cat might: licking delicately along the edge of his palm.

With the bottle now firmly back under his control, Dennis pours himself another drink. He watches as Charlie wipes his saliva-covered hands on his pants, then takes off his wet suit jacket. It's a useless effort; the alcohol's already soaked clear through, down to Charlie's shirtsleeves.

Dennis clears his throat. “So what you're saying is, you think everything can stay the same.”

“No reason it can't,” says Charlie. He's pulled his tie off, too; like he's Cinderella, transforming back into a disgusting peasant after one night of perfect happiness. The murder's over, the investigation's over: there's no reason for Charlie and Dennis' relationship to turn into something it's not. Sure, they'll probably have sex—but it doesn't have to mean anything. Maybe, with some time, the rest of the gang will get used to it. Life can go on.

“I don't want it to be the same,” Dennis admits. He doesn't want to see Charlie's reaction yet, so instead, he studies the edge of his glass. There's a glinting chip: a break in the rim that's going to be a big crack, some day. “I want us to be different. I wanna... feel. Feel like I did after we talked to that cop.”

“We can get more coke,” says Charlie, but even though he's acting oblivious, there's a spark in his eyes. Dennis thinks that maybe Charlie pretends not to understand because he really understands too much.

“I don't want more coke,” he swallows. “Okay, maybe a little more coke. But it's more than that. Back then, I felt like I had my life in my hands—tangibly. I was holding onto something, and it was slippery and tingling in my fingertips, and it wanted to get away, but it couldn't. I made it do what I wanted. I had a grasp on it.”

“How 'bout you concentrate on grasping that bottle, bro.”

“You're the one who spilled it, asshole,” says Dennis, but he's smiling.

“Yeah, yeah,” Charlie takes another drink and smacks his lips. “I'm not sure about you holding onto your soul fish or whatever, but I do like your cocaine idea,” he glances around the bar. “I'm sure Dee has a stash in here somewhere.”

Dennis starts to nod, then gets hit with some PSA memory from god-knows-when. Some required-viewing thing from high school or UPenn, full of tragic pregnancies and mangled bodies in crashed cars. “Wait, isn't that really bad for you: coke and alcohol?”

“Oh, excuse me, Mr. Vegan Straight Edge,” Charlie mocks. He starts yanking drawers out of the bar and dumping their contents on the counter, like he really believes Dee would hide her drugs in with the napkins and novelty drink umbrellas. “Obviously they're bad for you, but so what? You really think your liver's gonna hold out another twenty years?”

“No, I mean—they react together or something. It messes with your heart.”

Charlie pauses his search and gives Dennis' words a moment of thought before responding, “Well, cocaine's a stimulant, and alcohol's depressing, so they should cancel each other out, right? And we'll just feel normal.”

“Then what's the point of doing either one?”

They drink a few more rounds as they bicker. Charlie tears apart half the bar, but the longer he goes without finding Dee's cocaine, the more he feels the lack of its manic energy. Without its assistance, he runs out of steam quickly and returns to his seat beside Dennis. Charlie leans so far over against the counter that he's almost lying at Dennis' side, looking up at him, relaxed and easy—

Until he happens to glance at the clock, and then, he jolts back upright. “Oh shit, it's 11:11,” he says, and he grins tipsily at Dennis. “We gotta uh, we gotta go make a wish, dude.”

He grabs Dennis' hand and pulls him towards the side door. Maybe Dennis is drunker than he feels, because he doesn't push Charlie away. He lets himself be dragged along. As they step outside, they feel a cool breeze sweep through the alley. It would almost be refreshing, if it didn't smell like concentrated piss.

Charlie keeps talking, “And now we gotta find a star, or else the wish won't come true.”

“That's two different wish things. You're mixing them up,” says Dennis. Charlie ignores him and cranes his neck back, squinting into the night sky. His sweaty palm is still pressed against Dennis'. “Besides, how do you expect to see any stars in the middle of Philadelphia?”

“There could be stars!”

“There aren't any stars,” scoffs Dennis, and he's right. The sky is partially overcast, and the few clear patches are washed out by city lights. Everything's obscured, like the whole city is hiding under the covers. “And that's good, because I fucking hate stars.”

“What? Why would you—”

“The closest star is trillions of miles away,” The words come easily to Dennis, because this is a speech he says to himself a lot—as he lies awake at night, next to his estranged sister and his obsessive roommate and some elderly stranger, who just happens to be black. “Do you know how much a trillion is, Charlie? Because I don't. The human brain isn't supposed to process that kind of shit. And a trillion miles is nothing. There are stars that are billions of miles across—individual stars. And there are more stars than anything, everything on earth. It's not like the earth is a grain of sand; the whole galaxy's a grain of sand. There's nothing here. It's all out there, and it's—” Dennis takes a deep breath. “It's too fucking big.”

From a few feet behind them, an unfamiliar voice chimes in, “That's what she said.”

Dennis' face twitches into a disgusted sneer. God, how irritating. Even with Paddy's closed, there's still some idiot wandering around to ruin his night.

He turns to face the speaker, who's standing behind them in the alley. The guy is dressed a bit like Mac and sporting an amorphous slug of a nose, which must have gotten broken badly and never really healed. He has a bit of height on Dennis and a lot more on Charlie, but he's not big enough to be intimidating—not to the two of them, not after this many shots.

“Hey, can you fuck off, dude? We're trying to have a conversation here.”

The lowlife's eyes drift noticeably downward to where Charlie and Dennis' hands are still clasped, and he smirks. “Or that's what _he_ said, I guess. Hey, I don't judge. Everyone's equal to me.”

“Okay. Thank you? But I really don't need validation from some disgusting vagrant, so uh, off you go,” Dennis waves the man away with his free hand.

“Sure, I'll leave. Just as soon as you two ladies hand over your wallets,” the guy says, and then he reaches into his waistband and pulls out a big, stupid Bowie knife. Dennis is absolutely floored for a few seconds. It seems insane that, after all he's been though, some back-alley dumbass can still come up to him and try to take his wallet.

“Hey, Crocodile Dundee,” says Charlie, who's both quicker on the uptake _and _so full of liquid courage that his piss qualifies for a Medal of Valor. “I got a question for ya: what if we _don't_ do that?”

The guy shrugs and lifts up his knife hand. “Do you really want to find out?”

Dennis looks over, meeting Charlie's eyes just as they crinkle with a broad smile. Oh god. They do. They really, really do.

The mugger takes step towards them, but Charlie is faster. He throws himself at the guy, latches his teeth into the dude's left arm, and shakes his head back and forth: like a feral dog.

“Jesus fuck! What's wrong with you people?” The mugger yelps. He tries to shake Charlie off, but that only digs Charlie's teeth deeper into his skin. Blood spills over Charlie's mouth and onto the ground. Charlie's eyes are pinched shut with the effort, so he doesn't see what Dennis sees next: the flash of reflected light, as the mugger raises his right hand.

Even half-drunk, Dennis reacts quickly—he jabs his fist into the guy's throat. Something crunches. The mugger gasps and drops his knife, but he still manages to get off a wild, retaliatory swing. It connects, and Dennis falls flat on his back. He just lays there for a moment, keeping still, with his ears ringing and his hair stuck down to some slick on the pavement.

As for Charlie, well, he's tough as hell, but he's still forty years old and maybe a hundred thirty pounds. It's not much of a struggle for the other guy to get his hands around Charlie's throat. When Dennis sees Charlie start thrashing desperately, he leans forward on his elbows, trying to force himself upright. But even that movement makes his vision blur. He winces, looks down a the ground to stop his head from spinning—and that's when he notices the dropped Bowie knife, just a few inches in front of him.

“Hey, Charlie! Catch!”

Charlie turns his head, as much as he can with his throat in a vise, and limply holds out one hand for the pass. He's totally dazed; Dennis is certain that, given the opportunity, Charlie would've fumbled the catch and left them worse off than ever. So really, it's just as well that Dennis' throw doesn't bring the knife anywhere near Charlie's hand. The blade flies through the air like a dart, and when it connects, it sinks deep into the muscle above Charlie's knee.

Even though Charlie doesn't have enough breath left to scream, his mouth still falls open, and a little angry hiss comes out. Dennis cringes and shrugs up at him apologetically. Charlie closes his mouth to grit his teeth, and then he reaches down his leg, grips the knife handle, and—

Suddenly, Charlie pulls away. He gasps for air, then rubs his fingers over his bruised throat, winces, and rubs again. The mugger stumbles backwards, but he's not visibly bleeding. He doesn't even look wounded, really. The only strange thing about him is the bit of polished wood that seems to be hovering in midair, right below his sternum.

It must be a horrible injury, Dennis guesses; it's a deep wound, so there must be all sorts of internal bleeding, organs rupturing, whatever. It must be bad. But, as the guy rights himself and grabs for Charlie again, Dennis remembers stories about people under stress lifting cars and shit; fighting wild animals. _What doesn't kill you_—

Charlie mutters, “Oh, come on,” as the mugger shoves him up against the bar wall. He grabs Charlie by the hair and slams his head against the brick exterior. Charlie tries to defend himself, clawing at the guy's face, but every little knick Charlie gets in just makes the mugger slam his head back again.

Dennis can't stand—his legs and arms have gone strangely numb—but he knows he has to do something. Not just for Charlie's sake; as soon as this guy finishes Charlie off, Dennis is going to be in danger, too. This is about self-preservation. But, as Dennis drags himself over to the mugger's body on his ragged hands and knees, it would be a lie to say he isn't mostly motivated by the horrible, wet noises Charlie's head is making against the bricks. Dennis reaches up the mugger's torso and clenches his fist around the knife sticking out of the guy's chest. The dude doesn't even notice; his eyes are serenely glazed, as he watches the blood pour over Charlie's neck. Dennis takes a deep breath and yanks the knife handle straight down, all the way. Like with a frog in biology class.

Like before, the mugger stumbles backwards. But this time, he doesn't get a second wind. The guy makes it a few feet away, then collapses, gushing blood. Without anyone to keep him upright, Charlie slumps down against the wall; conscious but motionless. Dennis leans over next to him; his right arm is wet, showered with blood. All three of them sit on the ground, breathing raggedly.

Dennis still isn't sure if he could stand if he tried, but that's not stopping the adrenaline in his blood. He doesn't move his body, but his thoughts keep racing. There are so many feelings in Dennis' chest, and he's trying to make sense of them; like he's popping the hood on the Range Rover to see what's rattling in the engine. But it's useless. He doesn't understand his emotions any more than he does mechanics. When his car breaks down, he always has to go to— oh. Charlie. Dennis turns to him, and now, he doesn't think the thrum in his chest is only fear.

Charlie's brand new suit is red and ruined with blood. What a complete waste of money. But somehow, it doesn't feel like that to Dennis, because Charlie looks— he looks really good. Dennis' breath gets even shallower; he feels like that nurse, photographed being kissed by a returning soldier—breathless, with one arm clasped tight around his neck.

“Oh my god,” Charlie gasps; he's finally got enough air back in his lungs to make use of it. He shakes his head and puts a hand in his hair, then recoils as he feels how wet it is with blood. “Oh my god. That guy, he was... he was such an asshole!”

“Yeah,” says Dennis, not really thinking about the words, just looking at the way Charlie's blood-spattered shirt clings to his chest. “What was his problem?”

“He said he didn't judge, but he definitely judged!”

“Is this what being a minority feels like? 'Cause it fucking _sucks_.” (There's blood on Charlie's lips: wet, shiny rouge.)

“Maybe Mac was right to stay closeted.”

“Mac has literally never been right about anything,” Dennis mutters, coming back to himself a little. He presses his palms to the ground, trying to sit up straighter, and winces. “Ah shit, I really skinned my hands.”

“Oh, you skinned your hands? Skinned your hands, didya? How terrible.”

“Well, it was a tough fight,” Dennis looks over at Charlie again, and sees him spitting up another mouthful of his own blood, in between soft groans of pain. “You uh, doing all right? That guy really throttled you.”

“Yeah, he did, he did," Charlie wipes a little blood off his chin. "And that did hurt. But actually, the biggest thing was when you _fucking stabbed me in the leg_!”

“I saved your life!”

“Dude, that was some shit-tier life saving,” Charlie hisses out a breath and gingerly touches his leg. “Anyway, I hope you know how to do stitches, _surgeon hands_, 'cause I'm gonna need 'em.”

“Yeah, I can do them. Sure,” Probably. “But how about your head, man?”

“Head's fine. I got a thick skull.”

“You sure?” Dennis asks. Charlie seems pretty lucid, but he knows the mugger got in some serious blows. “You might have a concussion. Hey, tell me who's president.”

“Obama.”

So far, so good. “And who's vice president?”

Charlie raises his eyebrows. “Why the fuck would I know that?”

“Are you serious?” asks Dennis. “You don't know who the vice president of the United States is?”

“Do _you_ know who it is?”

“Of course I know! I'm trying to test you for a concussion; why would I ask you a question I didn't know the answer to?”

“I don't know! Why would you ask me some fucking obscure nerd trivia about the Supreme Court?”

Dennis isn't even sure how to _begin _to answer that. But that doesn't matter; he doesn't have to answer. Before there's even a noticeable gap in the conversation, someone new chimes in. Dennis hears a groan, neither the right pitch nor from the right direction to be Charlie's. It's coming from a few feet away, where the mugger fell. Dennis whips his head around.

“Oh shit!” Charlie says. “Zombie! Mugger zombie!”

“Don't be a fucking idiot,” Dennis responds automatically, even though it's really freaking him out, too—that their attacker is still alive. The alley is dark, but when he looks, Dennis can still see more than he'd like to see of the guy whose stomach he just cut open. At least when he'd chopped up Radoslaw's corpse, it wasn't grunting and struggling to hold its insides together. Dennis rubs a hand over his eyes and turns back towards Charlie. “So, what do we do now?”

“What do you mean, _what do we do_? Obviously, we—” Charlie drags a thumb across his throat, sticking out his tongue and bulging his eyes.

“We could still take him to the hospital,” Dennis shifts, like he's trying to get comfortable; like that's a thing it's possible to be, in a blood-soaked back alley, in front of a guy you tried to kill and a friend you want to fuck. “We didn't do anything wrong. He attacked us; we just defended ourselves. That's our right as Americans!”

“Dude, we escalated the shit out of that situation. Do you really think a self-defense plea is gonna hold?” Charlie scratches his head, and a few clumps of bloodied hair fall loose. “Of course, the law is all different if you're defending a castle, but—”

“Would you stop pretending you know what you're talking about?” snaps Dennis. “_Escalated_; I didn't escalate shit. You escalated! You're the one who bit him!”

Charlie grins, open-mouthed, and snaps his teeth together. Then he tilts his head and shrugs. “You can call an ambulance if you want. But when the hospital calls the police, don't come crying to me after they turn our bar into a hog farm. You want a buncha prized pigs-in-uniform sniffing around our records? They'll be all over us, looking for truffles, _if_ you know what I mean.”

“All right,” Dennis has to admit, he has a point.

“The truffles are like, the other dead bodies. And also all the old charges of assault, and harrassment, and fraud, and—”

“Yeah, I got that!”

“—and pig means cop, so—”

“For god's sake, Charlie, this is a man's life we're talking about!”

Charlie exhales. “Yeah. Okay. Maybe we could do it without the ambulance, then. We drive him to the hospital ourselves, knock him on the head, drop him at the curb, and just drive away. Coulda been anyone. Maybe that would work, but—” Charlie holds up a hand as Dennis starts to nod. “But, but, this guy's bleeding like a geyser, and if you drive him around, it's gonna totally ruin the leather in your car.”

“Ah, shit. You're right,” Dennis grimaces. “Okay, let's kill him.”

The two of them shakily make their way to their feet. Charlie sucks a breath in through his teeth when he first puts weight on his injured leg, but Dennis lays an arm over his shoulder and lets Charlie lean on him. They take a few slow steps, but Charlie gets the hang of it pretty quickly. He doesn't seem as hurt as he probably should be. Maybe the alcohol is still keeping the edge off the pain—although Dennis doesn't feel the slightest bit drunk, not anymore.

It would be nice if he was a little drunk, he thinks, as they kneel down beside their bloody victim. The guy grunts a little, but doesn't say anything. Maybe Dennis' throat-punch fucked up his voice. Maybe he's just too out of it to know what's happening; the guy almost _has_ to be in shock, with an injury like that. The knife's still sticking out of him, but it's not holding anything back.

The mugger doesn't even react as Charlie grabs onto him and says, “This kinda thing happens with the rats sometimes. I got it covered.”

And then Charlie clutches the guy's head and jerks it sharply to one side. Something snaps; Dennis winces. There. It's over. It's finally over, except—is that grunting noise getting louder? Is he still—

“Jee-esus Christ, were we mugged by Rasputin?” Dennis can't fucking believe this.

“Well," says Charlie, as he lets the limp, but still very much alive, body fall back to the pavement. "The good news is, he's definitely paralyzed now.”

“Yeah, because I was worried he was gonna get up and walk away after I split his intestines open like overcooked bratwurst!” yells Dennis, his voice getting almost as shrill as Charlie's.

“Oh man. This is pretty fucked up, isn't it?” Charlie seems to only just now be grasping the situation. He looks a little queasy; Dennis has never seen Charlie _queasy_ before in his life. “Hey, you wanna go back to the hospital idea?”

“We can't do that now that you broke the guy's neck! That definitely wasn't self-defense, man; he was helpless. That was more like a war crime.”

“War crime? A war crime? More like a war _on _crime, because he was a criminal, and I war'd on him,” Charlie's whole body is slightly vibrating, like he's too cold, even on an eighty-degree night. “This is, this is good, though. He was a bad guy, and we made the streets safer. I'm like, Batman.”

“Oh, you're Batman, are you? Tell me, which part of this situation, exactly, do you think resembles the life of the children's book hero, Batman?”

“Well uh, this guy's like an undying vampire, and that's a bat thing—”

“For fuck's sake, just—move over, I'll finish it,” says Dennis. He shoves Charlie out of the way and grabs the fallen body by the throat, then clenches his hands as hard as he can. Dennis can feel something soft and slippery pressing against his torso, but it's starting to not bother him so much. All the blood and guts—it almost doesn't feel real. It's weird; but Dennis pushes his emotions aside. He focuses on the hammering throb of his own pulse, and the slow, staggering one beneath his fingers. Under him, the dude's eyes start to go red as his blood vessels pop; then, they slip shut. The wet grunting finally stops.

Charlie coughs. “So uh, is he dead yet?”

“Yeah, he's—no, wait, I still feel a pulse. Give me another minute,” Dennis wraps his hands back around the guy's neck and squeezes again. Christ, this is taking so fucking long. But he's doing it. _He's_ doing it; holding on, grasping that tangible life under his fingers.

It's quiet for a moment. Dennis can only hear his own labored breaths and the squeak of his blood-wet hands adjusting on the guy's limp neck. Then, he starts to hear something else. Charlie's singing softly, under his breath, “_Ra, Ra, Rasputin, Russia's greatest love machine—_”

Dennis releases his grip and turns. “Oh, fuck off.”

“Hey, it's your fault it's stuck in my head.”

“Well, Rasputin's dead now, so shut the fuck up and help me move the body," says Dennis, after checking the guy's neck one last time. "We better get him inside before some witness shows up and turns this place into fuckin'... disembowelment dominoes.”

As they drag the dead guy through the bar, Dennis feels a strange pang of something like nostalgia. Seeing the blood smear on the wood again, the way Charlie still bumps into the tables when he tries to walk backwards, and how the bleaching bathroom lights still make death-white skin look even whiter—it's only been a month, but Dennis feels like he's been sent back a million years. Who even was he, before all this?

Once they drop the body next to the bathroom drain, Charlie, just like before, insists that they take their clothes off. Charlie's red fingers work the still partially-white buttons of his shirt, revealing his unmarked chest an inch at a time. Dennis is still in full fight-or-flight mode, his hands shaking too badly for him to undo his shirt. He rips it off, instead. The fabric tears and a few buttons fly off, but it's not like he could ever have worn it again, anyway. His clothes might not be as blood-soaked as Charlie's, but it's more than a little hydrogen peroxide will fix.

Dennis tears his own pants off easily, too, once his shaky hands manage to undo his belt. But it's not so easy for Charlie. He stands frozen after getting his shirt off. One hand's at his waistband, like he's ready to shove his pants down all at once and get it over with. But he doesn't move; his other hand keeps rubbing cautious circles around the bloody hole in his leg, unwilling to pull the fabric over the wound. Dennis feels a weird twinge in his chest.

“Hey, let me help,” he says, as leans down to examine at Charlie's leg. He tries moving the fabric for a better look, but it's stuck down with blood, and messing with it makes Charlie wince.

“These pants are too tight. If I was wearing my normal ones—”

“The pants have a flawless fit, Charlie; flawless. I know you're used to hand-me-down trash, but that doesn't make it better,” Dennis says confidently, but he's unsure of what to do. He looks nervously down at his feet and, for the second time that night, the same answer presents itself.

Dennis rips the Bowie knife out of the dead man's stomach and holds it up for Charlie to see. “I'm gonna cut your pants away, all right? Then you won't have to pull them over the wound.”

“Fuck off, no way am I letting you take another knife to my leg. No! I'm serious, dude!”

“This is happening,” says Dennis evenly, and he slips the knife up Charlie's cuff. The handle is wet and he's still overflowing with nervous energy, but Dennis concentrates, makes sure to go as slowly and steadily as he can, until—

Just as he's passing the knee, Charlie screams. Dennis drops the knife in a panic, ready to apologize, _really_ apologize. He looks up at Charlie's face, eyes full of concern, and sees—

Charlie's laughing. “Just fucking with you, man.” He grabs the cut edges of his pant leg and rips it the rest of the way off with his hands.

Dennis slams his fist into Charlie's uninjured thigh. “Asshole!”

“Hey, you're the one who stabbed me,” Charlie points out, as he steps out of the other leg of his pants. “You stabbed me, and you hit me, and you even shot me that one time, so it's only fair that I—”

“What? Shot you? I never shot you.”

“Are you serious?”

“That never happened,” Dennis insists.

“I'm telling you, it did. Do you really not remember? I know you're a self-centered prick, but if you don't remember that at all, you should probably get tested for dementia, man,” says Charlie. “'Cause Frank's got it, and you know: family history.”

Dennis rolls his eyes. “Whatever Frank's got has nothing to do with me. I'm not related to him, remember?”

“Well sure, not physically, but he still coulda passed it on.”

“What are you—how would he have passed it on to me without—do you think you can catch dementia, like the flu?”

“You get the germs from your parents when you're little, and later—”

Dennis realizes that, as they've been talking, they've drifted closer together. They're almost chest to chest, now. Skin to skin. His heart, which has been pounding ever since Charlie first jumped that guy in the alley, is about ready to pop. He looks into Charlie's darkened eyes, and when Charlie finally shuts up about his complete misunderstanding of genetics, Dennis says, “Well. I guess I am uh, sorry. For stabbing you. And shooting you, allegedly.”

“Then I guess I'm sorry for fucking with you,” Charlie replies. He nervously rubs a hand over his own chest, and his body hair makes a soft scratching noise under his palm. “Allegedly.”

“Yeah,” Dennis swallows, and he sees Charlie's eyes snap to his Adam's apple. “Hey, Charlie?”

And just like that, they come together; Charlie presses up against Dennis, and Dennis bends down to put his mouth on Charlie's neck. Beard stubble rasps under his tongue. It's rough and strange, so unlike kissing a woman; it feels like he's making out with a cat—oh god, where did _that _comparison come from? Charlie must be rubbing off on him.

Oh.

Now Charlie's literally rubbing off on him.

“How long,” Charlie's breath hitches, and he presses one of Dennis' legs between his own. “Have you been waiting to do this?”

“All month,” confesses Dennis.

“Oh.”

“Why?" Dennis rubs a hand over Charlie's spine and tries to make him return eye contact. "What about you?”

“Uh, well now it's kind of embarrassing.”

“Come on.”

“I dunno. I guess I always thought it _might_ happen. You're kind of a slut, bro,” Charlie lets out a shaky breath. “Hey, do you have a condom?”

Dennis makes a face. “No, I don't have a condom, Charlie, do you? I didn't exactly plan this.”

“We should really use a condom,” says Charlie, shifting his weight a little and scratching his beard.

Ridiculous. “What, my dick's too disgusting for you, the man who swims in sewage?”

“I don't want whatever you've got,” Charlie insists. “Mac always has gonorrhea.”

“What does that have to do with—Jesus Christ, I did not give Mac gonorrhea!”

“I don't care who got it from who, I still don't want it!”

“Goddamn it, Charlie!” says Dennis, who's starting to get twitchy, like his high is wearing off. “We're not gonna get a lot of chances to do it like _this_!”

Charlie sighs loudly through his nose and looks down. For a few horrible seconds, Dennis thinks he's going to be rejected—but then Charlie nods to himself and drops his bare knees onto the tacky bathroom tiles.

Dennis leans his back up against the wall, beside the urinals. He breathes hard—first in relief, and then in quicker, excited bursts. His fingers, which have been anxiously drumming on his legs, quickly weave into Charlie's hair. Charlie leans in and out, and Dennis is struck by how surprisingly good at this he is. Automatically, Dennis starts to thrust into his mouth—but Charlie snaps his teeth and grabs Dennis' hips in his hands, forcing them back against the wall. It's bossy; it should be annoying, but with Charlie's hands holding him, Dennis finds himself feeling steady for the first time all night.

He looks back down at Charlie's face and notices a little spatter of blood below one of his eyes. Dennis rubs softly over Charlie's cheekbone, trying to clean it without Charlie noticing, but the stain doesn't budge. Without really thinking about it, Dennis licks his thumb and then tries the stain again. He makes little wet circles on Charlie's face until Charlie looks up at him, with his eyes soft, unguarded.

Dennis finishes quickly, but that's fine—there's nothing embarrassing about that. He's always in complete control of his bodily processes. If anything, he's being courteous, because kneeling for too long could be bad for Charlie's injured leg.

But somehow, as Charlie sputters and coughs up white fluid, he doesn't take it as a courtesy. “Shit. Why didn't you warn me?”

“About what?” asks Dennis, even though he doesn't care. His eyes are still closed and he's barely aware of what's happening.

“The-the fucking jizz, dude! You're supposed to warn people, not blow outta no where, you Mount St. Helens fuck!”

“Oh, I'm _so_ sorry you got a little come in your throat," Dennis snaps, since apparently Charlie isn't going to let this go. "That really is just like a natural disaster.”

“God, I think I inhaled some,” Charlie hacks again.

“Why would I warn you, anyway?”

“It's common courtesy. Everybody does it, goddamn it!”

“But the whole point of having someone suck your dick is to demean them.”

“Holy shit, dude. How do you ever get laid? I can't fucking understand it,” Charlie shakes his head and wipes his mouth on his arm. “God. All right, come on; demean _yourself_, you sick bastard.”

Charlie shifts his hips to give clearer access. Dennis considers; the bathroom floor is really gross, and he'd like to avoid having to sit on it, if that's at all possible. Still leaning against the wall, Dennis reaches out with one leg. He hovers over Charlie's crotch for a second. Then, he grinds his shoe down, with about as much finesse as he'd use to stamp out a cigarette.

“Ow!” Charlie slaps Dennis' leg away. “What are you doing? Don't give me a footjob. Use your hands, you animal.”

Dennis sighs, but resigns himself to to bathroom floor. He does his best to avoid the little puddle Charlie just coughed up; there's no avoiding the old urine and fresh blood everywhere. “After the thing in the restaurant, I just assumed that was what you were into.”

“Not _exclusively_,” says Charlie, as Dennis spits on his own palm.

Reciprocity has never really been Dennis' thing, and having to waste his own post-orgasm chill on the floor of a public bathroom, right at nose level with the urinal drains and the fresh corpse, isn't making him reconsider his position. But he does what he can. At least Charlie's pretty cute, squirming around and flushing. He's very vocal, even though some of the little sounds he's making are more suited for dogs or bats than human ears.

“You always seemed like kind of a foot guy,” Dennis says, his hand still working. “Which is a little weird, but—”

“You get off on killing people! You literally _just _got off on killing a guy!”

“Yeah, well you're into murder _and_ feet, so...” Dennis trails off, but tightens his grip.

“Ah!”

“You like that?”

“Yeah,” Charlie pants. “I can tell you do this a lot.”

Dennis isn't sure whether Charlie's calling him a gay slut or a chronic masturbator; unfortunately, he's kind of into it, either way. Well, not _into it_ into it, because he just came. But he does feel a little shiver down his neck.

Charlie comes quickly, too; and for him, it is embarrassing. Dennis makes a note to tease him about it later, as Charlie moans and slumps forward, pressing his lips to Dennis' shoulder. His scratchy cheek rubs back and forth as he mutters softly, indistinctly: like he's falling asleep.

“Hey. Hey! We don't have time for this, come on,” Dennis jostles Charlie, who just whines and lies back down. “We still have to chop up the dead body.”

“I don't know if anyone's ever told you this," says Charlie. "But your pillow talk is _ass_."

The movement of Charlie's lips tickles Dennis' chest when he speaks. His breath makes a little cool spot between Dennis' pecs.

“We can't dick around—”

Charlie snorts.

“—any more than we already have,” Dennis amends. “Someone's gonna see the blood in the alley.”

“It's not like they'd know it's human. We can say we butcher our own meat, like survivalists or something.” Without warning, Charlie breaks into his stupid southern accent, “Gotta start hunnin' now, 'fore the fluoride 'n radiation make all the ky-oats transgender. I don't eat nuthin' on hormones.”

Dennis lets out an exasperated sound that is definitely _not _a laugh. He shifts to lean one shoulder against the urinal; the porcelain is icy on his naked skin. “You know, Frank actually took me hunting once, when I was a kid.”

“Was it the endangered elephants?”

“No, no elephants. Not even birds or foxes or whatever rich people are supposed to hunt. No, Frank grabbed me out of like, first grade, threw me in the back of his hundred-fifty-thousand dollar car, and drove hours out into the sticks, all for _deer._”

“Oh yeah?”

“Can you believe it? In the suburbs, you can shoot a deer from your kitchen window,” Dennis had thought about doing it, too, when he'd only had Mac's terrible cooking for sustenance. “And this is the animal that Frank thinks warrants a day long hiking trip. It was insane. He even hired a guide: some creepy hick fuck. The guy looked like an extra from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

“Hillbillies are the worst, man. They'll kill and eat you over nothing,” says Charlie, as he picks some blood off his nails.

“Anyway, it took hours for us to even _see_ a deer, but Frank did get one, finally. And the guide strung it up, skinned it—he got the skin off so quickly; I remember thinking it was like watching Mom take off her stockings. It just rolled down, like it wasn't even connected to that mess underneath. Of course, the skin was trash: all blood-matted, and full of holes because of Frank's dogshit aim—it took him a dozen shots to kill the damn thing. The guide wanted to throw it away. But I don't know, man. Something came over me; I thought the fur was so pretty. For some reason, I wouldn't let go of it. Frank tried to rip it off me, but I held on. I put it over my shoulders and walked around. It was like a security blanket.”

“Wow! Really weird story, dude! Very creepy and gross, thank you,” Charlie tilts his head to look Dennis in the eyes. “Are you telling me this because you want to make a blanket out of the dead guy's skin?”

“What? Charlie, don't be an idiot, you dumb moron. A skin blanket? A blanket made out of human skin? Why would I do something as amazingly stupid as making a skin blanket?”

It takes a little coaxing, but Dennis eventually gets Charlie back upright, with his wounded leg steady under his weight. The cut has stopped bleeding, thank fuck, but it's still open and ugly. Dennis hopes there's some medical disinfectant in among the bottles of chemical cleaners Charlie is dragging out to the alley. There's nothing badass about dying of sepsis. Before he leaves, Charlie passes Dennis the hacksaw, with a little incline of his head, a quirk of his brows—like even though _he's_ the injured one, he's still worried about Dennis.

Dennis wordlessly nods, and Charlie leaves to deal with the alley. Division of labor; they're quite a team, the two of them. Dennis looks down at his half of the bargain: at the body, the Bowie knife, the blade of the saw; and softly, he says to himself, “But maybe a skin belt...”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please leave a comment and tell me your thoughts, positive or negative.


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